"When I started this tour, the Peace Philharmonic had just reached its 10th year. I just wanted to get back to piano playing," says Sala-Santamaria. "I didn’t imagine we would really be touring the whole of Visayas and Mindanao."
Her piano partner, US-based Filipino pianist Reynaldo Reyes, was only available two weeks or so in the summer, and this coincided with the school season in the Philippines. They have since taken the works of the masters to almost all corners of the Philippines.
And surprise, it has updated her on the state of piano education – and the calamitous state of pianos – in the country.
The first concert tour took them to Makati, Cebu City and Davao City. While they had the luxury of Yamaha baby grands in Makati, they barely survived the Davao leg of that trip.
"The pianos were simply awful," she admits.
On tours to Tuguegarao, Ilagan, Isabela and Virac, Catanduanes, they had to make do with battered and out-of-tune upright pianos. In the Visayas, they repaired rat-eaten pianos to passable condition. But the stop in Cagayan de Oro City really took the cake. Promised with two Yamaha pianos by their local contact, they arrived at the venue two hours before the show to discover that they were going to play on electric organs.
How did it sound?
"It was different," she says with smile.
But all that is now water under the bridge. For their Central Luzon tour, Sala-Santamaria is taking her two Kawai baby grands, hauling them through Zambales, Bataan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija and Bulacan.
"It’s a good thing its just a few hours away by land," she says. "Just think how much it would cost us if we were going to do this is Visayas and Mindanao."
She says no other Filipino artist has attempted a comprehensive tour of the Philippines, except for violinist Gilopez Kabayao. Kabayao has made it a crusade to play his violin for students throughout the Philippines for decades now.
"But I don’t think Gilopez did it as intensive as we do," she adds. "I know he would go to a town and stay there for two weeks, doing maybe four or five concerts. But we’re doing 10 or 12 shows in so many towns in a matter of days."
The sixth national concert tour of Romantic Piano Concerto Journey starts on June 12 and will be on the road until June 30. It will have 29 concerts in 18 towns, cities and schools in Central Luzon and Metro Manila. It will also have again a telecast concert at Concert at the Park on June 29. And not just that. The duo is performing in two concerts in Los Angeles, California before the tour starts on Independence Day.
Many of the concerts are held at 4 and 7 p.m. However, there are some shows which start at 10 a.m.
Do they still have time to warm up?
"Not anymore," says Sala-Santamaria. "We go straight to the venue and just start playing. I don’t know how we do it. I think it’s really just the adrenaline."