Classical guitarist

Twice a year, the Filipino classical guitarist Michael Amper Dadap who lives in New York City,comes to his native land for a visit. During his last three visits, he conducted workshops in Duma-guete City to train music teachers to teach students to play the banduria as a solo instrument. Most of the participants are students at the Silliman University School of Music and another school in the city. The textbook used is The Virtuouso Banduria, Basic Method for the Banduria as a Solo Instrument authored by Michael.

"My ultimate goal is to build an orchestra without the bow (or violin), and using the banduria. In the barrios they can’t afford to buy the violin. Why can’t poor children enjoy Bach and Mozart? They can start with the banduria without any bias. You see we limit ourselves by thinking of the banduria as baduy." But with Michael as teacher, the instrument is elevated to a magical realm.

The night before Michael left for New York City, we had the privilege of listening to him perform in the painting-studied saloon of Odet Alcantara in Blue Ridge, Quezon City. He was taken there by Bert Robledo of the Bravo Filipino Music Society. He is in his 60s, a pleasant, small man with boyish looks, his salt-and-pepper hair nearly covering his eyes.

He played Prelude in E minor and Prelude in A minor by the Brazilian Hector Villalobos, and a valse and a paean to the Lord by A. Barrios, and his original compositions which are guitar serenades in the Visayan style. He played Kimpang Balitaw (about a drunken politician at a public dance), Balud (waves crashing sand castles), Damgohon Kita (I’ll always dream of you), Dyaga-dyaga (a teasing song), and two pieces (Pobreng Alindahaw and Walang Paalam from his Himig ng Puso CD album. With his classic guitar (one of 12 guitars made by a German luthier every year), he teased, he made sad and laugh, and reflective, his audience.

Michael is an accomplished composer and folklorist, whose compositions have won him many awards in the United States. His recordings of original arrangements of Filipino kundiman (love songs) and Intimate Guitar Classics, was featured as the "album of the month" on WQXR. He was named the 2000 Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts Artist of the Year.

Since 1984, Michael has been the artistic/musical director and conductor of the Children’s Orchestra Society of New York. In collaboration with the COS faculty and staff, he has initiated and developed many orchestral teaching programs for young musicians. His programs and music cirricula, including solfege and ear training for very young children, chamber music for beginners to advanced players, and an emphasis on reading music, are permanent signatures of COS.

He formed the Young Symphonic Ensemble and created the Discovery Concert Series, which has presented annual concerts at New York’s Lincoln Center. He has conducted and collaborated with outstanding soloists from the COS faculty as well as some of the world’s finest musicians, which include Emmanuel Ax. Cho-Liang Lin, Chee-Yun, Soovin Kim, Li-Jian, Yo-Yo Ma, David Shifrin and Michael Tree.

A Filipino in heart and spirit, he has devoted a good portion of his career to the appreciation of Filipino folk music, and the Filipino rondalla, in the US.

Michael is one of 14 children of public school teachers in Hinonongan, Leyte. His first musical instrument was a ukulele on which he played folk songs and Elvis Presley hits. Then his father gave him a guitar from Cebu, and that’s when his journey to stardom began. He went to UP Diliman for a bachelor’s degree, major in philosophy, but stopped for nearly two years to go on tour with the Filipinescas Dance Company as its folk guitarist. While in Mexico, a music lover took him to look at classical guitars, but Michael was not impressed.

It was while listening to radio DZFE when he returned home that he became bewitched with the instrument. They were playing, he said, classic guitarist Rey de la Torre’s Variations on a Theme by Mozart.

He quit the rock band Echoes and Frolics where he played rock’n roll, to be a jazz guitarist, and finished his studies. In 1974 he went to New York City to take up a four-year Special Diploma for Performance in Classic Guitar. He made his debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1974, and received positive reviews from music critics.

He wanted to come home, with the dream of putting up a school for classical guitar. "But the dream died because I could not come back to the Philippines because of the political situation here." He couldn’t, either, as the military was hot on his trail. He was a political activist, and he wrote an operetta for Kabataang Makabayan, Huling Pagsamo. The late national artist Levy Celerio gave him pointers to improve the obra maestro. The operetta, recalls Michael, becamethe national anthem of Filipino political activists in New York."

Besides, he was financially-strapped, he said. He had to teach private students and work part-time with a guitar and strings company.

"We performers have lots of ups and downs. We live by the edge of the sword. You’re only as good as your last concert. You can’t rest on your laurels." What kept him going was his love for music. Now a well-known artist, he is far from feeling deprived. He goes on concert tours around the US and Europe, with his wife, cellist Yeou-Cheng Ma. (Their two children, by the way, are also into music. Laura, 17, plays the cello and sings, and Daniel, 20, plays the trombone and percussion.

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