Celebrating FEU’s musical heritage with Carlos Ibay
MANILA, Philippines - To mark its 87th anniversary, the Far Eastern University (FEU) presents two shows featuring blind tenor-pianist Carlos “Chuckie” Ibay.
The anniversary celebrations start on Jan. 20 with a concert at the FEU Auditorium followed by the second show on Jan. 21 at the Samsung Hall of SM Aura, which serves as fundraiser for cultural scholarships to be administered by the FEU Educational Foundation and the Bohol Restoration Group. The org is undertaking a 50-year plan to restore and rebuild the churches damaged or destroyed by last year’s earthquake.
Ibay’ vocal repertoire ranges from opera arias, sacred songs, American standards, to songs from Italy, Spain, France and the Philippines. As an established concert pianist, he is equally at ease performing Tchaikovsky’s B-Flat Piano Concerto, improvising on Tatum’s Humoresque, playing his own transcription of Broadway musicals or making the audience snap their fingers to his own arrangements of the music of the great jazz artists.
At age 33, he has performed in five continents and has wowed audiences at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Carnegie Hall in New York City, The Rachmaninoff Center of the Arts in Russia, The Teatro Storchi in Modena, Italy, and the concert halls of Brazil, Australia and Israel.
?Ibay studied with Thomas Schumacher, a professor then at the University of Maryland, now teaching at the Eastman Conservatory of Music in Rochester, New York. Carlos is now studying with Dr. Thomas Mastroianni, former dean of the Music Department at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C and president of the American Liszt Society.
Tickets are available at P500 and P1,000. For inquiries, call the President’s Committee on Culture office at 736-4897.
