Cecile Licad's showbiz connections

MANILA, Philippines - What do film composer Willie Cruz, Nonie Buencamino, film director Mike de Leon, LVN matriarch Donya Sisang (de Leon), composer Francisco Buencamino, and pianist Cecile Licad have in common?

Well one way or the other, they all descended from the musically-oriented Buencamino clan that started in San Miguel, Bulacan and later branched out in Metro Manila and other parts of the country.

Licad and Willie Cruz, Mike de Leon, Nonie and Nonong Buencamino are cousins and the great grandmother of Chiz Escudero is aunt of author-music teacher Rosario Licad who happens to be the mother of the country’s greatest pianist, Cecile Licad.

To be precise, Cecile’s maternal grandfather — Gumersindo Buencamino — worked in the administrative section of LVN pictures while her mother’s sister was finance person in the same studio.

“For many years before my marriage,” said Mrs. Rosario B. Licad, ”we lived in the LVN compound and my family were close to the famous stars of that time.”

It was understandable that during her first piano recital, Mrs. Licad had an array of famous movie stars led by Lilia Dizon (mother of Christopher de Leon) as her concert usherettes.

“In that LVN compound, we lived during the heyday of the likes of Rogelio de la Rosa,” said Mrs. Licad.

Meanwhile, the then very young Cecile Licad  grew up watching the early films of Dolphy, Leopoldo Salcedo and other stars of LVN. Television and films are Licad’s only respite from piano playing.

Flashback to the mid-‘80s at the CCP main theater. Among the movie stars who watched Licad’s concert at the CCP were director Marilou Diaz-Abaya, Susan Roces, Charito Solis and Dina Bonnevie who were then making an aborted film about musicians.

Thus began another cycle of showbiz connections of the country’s most celebrated pianist.

Later in the ‘80s, Licad, Meryl Streep and Mikhail Baryshnikov found themselves invited to an exclusive White House dinner honoring famous American artists that included Licad’s teacher, Rudolf Serkin. After that dinner, Cecile played a movement from Saint-Saens’ Second Concerto at the Kennedy Center.

Did Licad make it to that White House dinner?

She didn’t. As the pianist recalled, she was so focused on her practice she didn’t have time to grace the White House dinner. Her main concern: She didn’t want to disappoint her teacher (Rudolf Serkin) in that worldwide televised gala. “I skipped that dinner and focused on my practice,” said Licad. “I think a White House staff asked my mother what was wrong with me avoiding those great names in American film, theater and dance. I thought it was better to prepare for that performance rather than attend a dinner and then later make a fool of yourself in that concert.”

On that same decade, Licad got the thrill of her life when Joan

Collins (whose old films she watched) and Jody Foster (she just saw Silence of the Lamb then) greeted her and violinist Nadja Sonnenberg.

Flashback in September right after Typhoon Ondoy devastated Metro Manila. On the phone, Cecile asked me if I knew Elvis Presley and I yelled back and said, “Of course I know Elvis Presley! I knew him before I even heard of Bach or Beethoven.”

Then she continued: “Guess where I performed recently? I just came from Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of Elvis Presley, and I got one of the most unforgettable concert receptions in my whole life. They were not just clapping; they were yelling and cheering and I almost run out of encore pieces.”

Deedee Cantrall, a Tupelo resident and a native of the Philippines, was quoted to have said Elvis Presley might have helped make the concert possible. Cantrall lives on Elvis Presley Boulevard, which Licad’s manager noticed in an e-mail.

“Good is not a word to describe her,” said Dr. Noel Garcia, a Houston physician (he is from Davao City) who helped arrange Licad’s performance. “When I see people like her, people who do so well, it inspires me to do what I can do as well as I can,” Garcia said. “I can never play like her, but at least I can watch. I can listen. She is amazing.”

Reported Mississippi music critic Robert Bruce Smith of that performance in the home city of Elvis Presley: “Unusual as it is for an orchestral season to open without an orchestra, that’s exactly what happened Saturday night at the Link Centre Concert Hall. Instead, a lone woman — beautiful, dynamic, phenomenally talented — plus the Tupelo Symphony Orchestra’s grandly sonorous Steinway, WERE the orchestra. And when this beautiful Philippine pianist began to caress the Steinway’s keys with her flying fingers, no one noticed the absence of 80 symphonic musicians at all! The performance itself fulfilled every expectation of Licad’s legendary musicianship. Having heard her several times over the past 30 years, I was astonished by the continuing freshness and almost childlike wonder of her musical inspiration, coupled with one of the most dazzlingly expressive sets of fingers on this planet.”

Last month, Licad debuted with a Russian orchestra in Freiburg, did a solo recital in Mainz and will be heard again with celebrated German cellist Alban Gerhardt tomorrow, Dec. 6 in Montreal.

Next year after her stint with Gerard Salonga’s FILharmoniKA, Licad will be heard in Cannes in a special program initiated by a film director who fell in love with her Gottchalk recording.

By that time, Licad’s showbiz connections worldwide shall have come full cycle.

(For Filipino music lovers in Montreal, the venue of the Licad-Gerhardt  concert on Dec. 6, 3:30 p.m. is in Pollack Hall 555 Sherbrooke St. W., Mtl with tel. no. (514) 398-4547 or log on to www.lmmc.ca).