How easy it is to fall in love with his music! From his violin comes the most beautiful sound, and his command of the musical instrument is magnificent, much like a rider expertly guiding his horse to victory at an equestrian event or a premier danseur executing some turns in the air to glacéed perfection. Each performance is a sight to behold for lovers of classical music.
And to think that what I saw was just a glimpse of what he has to offer during his special recital on Jan. 28 at the Philamlife Threater with pianist Rudolf Golez. Joseph Esmilla was one of our resource persons during the Analog 101 seminar held last September at the AIM Conference Center. His topic was classical music appreciation, and he let his violin do the explaining. And boy, not a single soul was sitting by the end of his presentation! Everybody demanded an encore. To say that each member of the audience that day learned to appreciate classical music in 20 minutes is an understatement.
Joseph’s upcoming concert is a homecoming of sorts. Some 30 years ago, he played his first full-length recital at Philamlife Theater, the proceeds of which paid for his airplane fare to New York to audition at The Juilliard School. The Joseph that I saw was a mould shaped and refined at that prestigious school where he eventually received his Bachelors and Masters of Music degrees under the tutelage of Dorothy DeLay, Masao Kawasaki and Jens Ellerman. While Julliard provided him with the fundamentals, his instinctive creativity and impressive improvisations make him a compleat musician.
I met up with Joseph again during last November’s Hi-Fi Show. I knew that the organizers allotted a room for him to display his audio creations, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the music his all-mono set up dished up. For a few seconds, I was overwhelmed by the thought that I may have been transported to Rick Blaine’s Café Americain, the fictional bar/cafe from the hit 1940s movie Casablanca. His room reverberated with sounds of that era — when values were lofty and brilliant thoughts and musical stimulation seemed boundless. Easily, his room became one of the show-stealers.
This is the other side of Joseph some of you may not know. He is a consummate and well-respected DIYer. Designing audio circuits and sharing their schematics to DIYers worldwide, JE (Joseph Esmilla) Labs has become a byword among various audiophiles communities affiliated with audio fora such as Audiogon, AudioKarma, among others. Some of his designs have been featured in audio magazines in the US.
Joseph the musician started under the tutelage of his father Sergio Z. Esmilla Jr. He was also mentored by Oscar C. Yatco and Basilio Manalo. While doing post-graduate work in violin and chamber music with Felix Galimir at the Mannes College of Music, he won the concerto competition and performed the Bruch G minor concerto with the Mannes Orchestra which was later broadcasted by WQXR in New York City. Subsequently, he pursued professional studies in violin and chamber music with Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley of the Guarneri Quartet.
The man who would later evolve into Joseph the audio DIYer always possessed a keen interest in learning how things work. As a child, he preferred making his own toys — from building kites to customizing his own bike.
In the 1990s, while pursuing professional studies in music with members of the Guarneri Quartet, he moonlighted as a technician servicing classic tube equipment for Angela Instruments, a well-known tube audio and parts dealer in the US. Through this affiliation he expanded his connections in the audio trade by attending antique radio swap meets and ham radio festivals, looking for sources of affordable vintage components, tubes, transformers, speakers and other materials to upgrade his sound gadgets.
So much has been written about Joseph since he returned for good to the Philippines. His Jan. 28 concert should be an opportunity for music lovers to see the man in the flesh and hear how he transforms musical pieces such as Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata, Brahms’s Sonatensatz, Kreisler’s Caprice Viennois and Tambourin Chinois, the jazzy-romantic Gershwin-Heifetz excerpts from Porgy and Bess, Romanza Andaluza of Sarasate and Polonaise Brillante of Wieniawski into something our souls can feed on.
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