Think about it
Bach and Beatles concert in Baguio a hit
By Jun Velasco
“Tune your ears to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding. For the Lord grants wisdom.” Proverbs 2:2, 6.
AFTER the over-hyped boxing riff-raff (we told you it won’t do us any good!), two recent, surely more meaningful, more beneficial — health-wise and otherwise – events caught our attention.
These are :
1) The Bach vs. Beatles concert held recently at the Hill Station in Calle Vallejo in Baguio City on April 25, and 2) President Noynoy’s Canada visit last mid-week. The visit brings back to mind a “garbage” incident 2 years back when a private Canadian export company illegally shipped trash including soiled adult diapers to Manila.
The two events have a soft spot in our heart.
Being a self-proclaimed singer via a videoke ourself, we are an old fan of the Beatles, just like Mangatarem’s Al Mendoza and Lingayen’s Oscar Angeles. You should re-read their songs’ lyrics evoking some profound messages to the world, a philosophy, a creed.
Written for Wednesday’s PDI by our pal and fellow Quezonian Pablo Tariman, the news article on the fine rendering by the Manila Symphony Orchestra (MSO) with the head, “Baguio folk pool resources to get ‘Bach vs. Beatles’ Concert treat” featured their respective concertos “arranged in Baroque style” among them “Lady Madonna,” “Michele,” “A Hard Days Night.”
Had we learned of the MSO’s Baguio concert, earlier, we would have post-haste used our hard-earned extra money to watch it.
When Sunday Punch’s Gerry Garcia was still alive, he’d boast to us his iron-clad friendship with Red Romero, Barangay Pantal’s pride, who was a violinist, took pride in the fact that Red was his bosom friend. Many of his editorials and columns in this paper hungered for cultural shows, now an arid parched land in the province.
Tariman quoted Maryknoll sister Nora Maulawin, one of the leaders of the concert, who said that “classical music connects humans to nature and allows a deeper understanding of what life has to offer.”
“It gives us extra energy to face life and pollution and environmental tragedy,” she said.
Another sister Perla Macapinlac, creation specialist at the ICM House of Prayer, described her interaction with them: “Science tells us that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang. Everything that exists came out of that. Music was there in the beginning, in the clashing of stars, the forms that came out – dinosaurs that roared, birds that tweeted, falling rain.”
She said, “While I told them about this, they mimicked the sound of rain, birds, wind. It took the coming of humans with our capacities for self-reflection and creativity to bring these sounds together and make beautiful music.” “That, too, is part of God’s creation. As musicians, their role is to partner with God in making sounds more beautiful, their work a part of the music of the universe.”
President P-noy’s Canada visit on the other hand brings to the fore ongoing efforts between our two countries, with Canadian aid focused on women empowerment, microenterprise and sustainable entrepreneurship at the micro level.
Incidentally, Toronto-based Tita Angeles Yumol, younger sister of our friend Oscar Angeles, was in town last week. We shared the idea that “Canada must be the best-governed country in terms of socio-economic progress and peace and order so much so that residents do not mind paying higher taxes.
“Sulit naman,” she said.
Tita has lived for 19 years in Toronto since 1997.
We stayed for two weeks in 1992 at the suite of former Gov. Tito Primicias and the homes of Nonoy and Patria Salvador and Conrad and Tessie Belisario.
Tita’s brothers, our faithful friends, Oscar and Albert have donated precious real estate to friends, including Muslims.
May their tribe increase.
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