Ateneo Art Gallery at 50 / Ochanine's youth concert / Remarkable musical artists

The Ateneo Art Gallery, the country’s first modern art museum, celebrates its 50th anniversary on Oct. 24. Decades ago, Fernando Zobel donated his works and those by leading Filipino artists to the gallery.

For the celebration, a gala program will present the world premiere of Francis de Veyra’s music “In the Eye of Modernity” which was expressly commissioned by the Ateneo Museum.

The concert at the Leong auditorium — named after Ricardo and Dr. Rosita Leong — will be followed by a cocktail reception and the opening of the Ateneo Art Gallery’s expanded exhibition space where Arturo Luz’s sculpture “Homage to Fernando Zobel” will be unveiled and a Lee Aguinaldo retrospective will be on view.

Zobel, one of the early dynamic modern painters, taught art at the Ateneo for a while, then migrated to Spain permanently where his Casas Colgadas (Hanging Museums) enjoyed the patronage of King Juan Carlos.

Heading the 50th anniversary gala committee are Ramon Lerma, director and chief curator of the Ateneo Art Gallery and Ching A. Montinola, honorary chairperson for culture and the arts.

In the belief that the PPO, as the country’s national orchestra, “has a great responsibility and opportunity to expose our young children to the powerful world of music,” Olivier Ochanine, music director and principal PPO conductor, will wield the baton over the PPO’s first season concert for children, ages 8-12, on Oct. 20 at 11 a.m. at the CCP. Billed “Turn on the Beat, Bring Out the Moves: A PPO Concert for Young Audiences”, it will introduce the elements of dance and rhythm to children who will listen and move to excerpts from Western and Filipino symphonic music. “This,” explains Ochanine, “will focus on combining the auditory senses with the pulse that is both inherent in music and humans.”

Helping children develop that sense of relationship between music and dance will be Tchaikovsky’s Waltz from “Sleeping Beauty”, Saint-Saens’ “Dance Macabre, Offenbach’s “Can Can”, Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance No. 5”, Ravel’s “Pavane”, Bizet’s “Farandole”, Copland’s “Hoedown” from Rodeo and Strauss’ “Thunder and Lightning Polka”.

Ochanine adds: “Short of expecting every child to choose music as his/her life-long career, we can at least be the medium through which our young and impressionable generations are enlightened to the amazing powers of expressing self through music, whether as singer, instrumentalist, or even song writer.”

On the PPO’s aim to present Young People’s Concerts both at the CCP and around the country, Ochanine says “the objective is simple yet crucial to the education of our young people: to expose them to music at the most impressionable time (when they are entering school) and in their teen years.”

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Although I continue writing my columns, my protracted illness has prevented me from attending the recent PPO concert conducted by Ochanine — who always infuses music with singular meaning — and featured pianist Georg Slavchev for Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto.

With deepest regret, I also missed the duo concert of Albert Tiu and Qui Li Wei. Tiu, one of our top pianists, has won several prestigious international prizes and performed in five continents. Cellist Wei, some aver, is the next Yoyo Ma.

The thoroughly home-grown pianist Mary Anne Espina, graduating summa cum laude under mentors Dr. Raul Sunico and Fr. Manuel Maramba at the UST Conservatory, has become a most sought-after assisting artist. She has collaborated with many celebrated foreign and local instrumentalists and singers, and has played for full-length musicals, one featuring Japanese soprano Kaori Sato; another, Andrew Fernando and Clarissa Ocampo, among others.

She joined the Manila Woodwind Ensemble for Korea’s Asia Music Festival, played for “Miss Saigon” in Manila, Hongkong and Singapore, and for “Hairspray”. She has performed as soloist of the UST Orchestra, PPO and MSO.

Versatile Farida Kabayao, actress (lead in “Diary of Anne Frank” and “My Fair Lady”, Iloilo productions), dancer and violinist-member of the Kabayao Quintet, recently sang Broadway songs at Rockwell.