Archive - Arts & Culture

Text and photos by NORMAN SISON IT does not have the ambiance of a coffee shop. It has no barista nor brewed coffee. There is no one to serve you because there is nobody around at all — and that’s why it’s a regular stop for tourists.

By ERIN EMOCLING Photos from LUISA MANUEL MANY of today’s famous photographers, like American Terry Richardson, started their photographic pilgrimage early in life. But others take longer to discover their penchant for photography, like Julia Margaret Cameron, a famous British portraitist in the 1800s who began taking sepia-toned Victorian portraits in her late 40s. Twenty-two-year-old

  Text and photos by NORMAN SISON WHEN you touch down in Basco, the provincial capital of the Batanes Islands, the feeling of you being in the northernmost corner of the Philippines is immediate. It’s so quiet. The airport runway is good for small aircraft only. Its terminal, designed to look like a hut, would

  By ELIZABETH LOLARGA Photos by ANNA LEAH SARABIA CHAMBER music that is movingly, and thus successfully, played in a small setting has much to do with subduing the ego. The musician’s instrument engages in friendly banter with the others so they rise together to touch the sublime. Wednesday’s “Turning Point: A Chamber Music Evening”

  By ERIN EMOCLING TWO years ago on March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9 earthquake followed by a deadly tsunami hit Japan, claiming thousands of lives and destroying homes and other properties. Most affected by the megadisaster  was the Tohoku region in the north-eastern portion of Japan’s largest island of Honshu. The catastrophe caused widespread destruction

By PABLO A. TARIMAN  A glimpse of the glorious past of Catanduanes  is unraveled in the barely two year-old Catanduanes Museum in the old capitol building, one of the historic landmarks of the 12th largest island in the country. On exhibit are the 1895 window panel from the ancestral house of  Don Ariston Sarmiento, including

By ELIZABETH LOLARGA Photos by KIMI FERNANDEZ NEWBIE author Baboo Mondoñedo has reason to meet each morning with a full smile on her face these days.  She has lived a colorful, challenging life long enough to see a dream nurtured in her youth realized: the publication by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House of

  By PABLO A. TARIMAN  BEING classical musicians in a country — where noontime shows have more following than decent concerts — is always a struggle. Violinist Gina Medina, for one, isn’t just concertmaster of the Manila Symphony Orchestra. On top of her season orchestral schedule, she has to teach as well and coach young

  By PABLO A. TARIMAN MANILA is extremely lucky with excellent cellists as it is with great artists performing in its leading temple of the arts. In the 70s, Manila’s music lovers heard  the great French cellist Pierre Fournier, the “aristocrat of the cellists”; in the  early 80s, it had the great Russian cello icon

 By ERIN EMOCLING Photos from PUNCHDRUNK PANDA NOWADAYS, a wide range of products are readily available to consumers through the Internet. The real challenge in having an online business is how to make one’s products stand out from the competition. Punchdrunk Panda (PdP), a company engaged in online selling, offers unique and functional “world-class” Pinoy

  By PABLO A. TARIMAN BLUES and country music in Tupelo, Mississippi took a backseat Saturday night last week when world-acclaimed Filipino pianist Cecile Licad performed for the first time with the Tupelo Symphony Orchestra under Steven Byess as soloist in Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major and Totentanz: Paraphrase on Dies Irae

  By NORMAN SISON WHEN Brian McAllister Linn went to Ohio State University in 1975, his graduate adviser gave a lecture on the US Army and the Philippine-American War. The topic so fascinated him that he wound up spending 20 years researching for a definitive book on the conflict. Linn pored over US Army records,

By ERIN EMOCLING Photos from CURIOUS SETTING FASHION stylist Pam Quinones has a library in her home, which is accessible only by using a ladder. The library’s unusual location (the loft) is not due to space constraints; on the contrary, her French-themed house with its high ceiling and muted earth colors is quite spacious. Quinones’

   By PABLO A. TARIMAN  THERE are many things going for a TV network (with a film outfit) running a symphony orchestra. For one, it is assured of resident musicians who can service the music needs of its telenovelas and film releases. It doesn’t have to run to CCP or elsewhere for its music events

By ERIN EMOCLING “NOT all those who wander are lost,” said J.R.R. Tolkien in his  book, The Fellowship of the Ring. They discover a thousand and one things. Some even find themselves. Seven young artists from the University of the Philippines show their stirring take on what wandering, being lost, and subsequently found. Their artistic

 Text and photos by ELIZABETH LOLARGA LABAW DONGGON was that rare epic drama set to music complete with a chanter, a chorus, whose members moved as though they trained as gymnasts, dazzling costumes and a natural setting, all of which didn’t detract from a complicated plot line. Afterwards, one emerged from the makeshift outdoor theater

Text and photos by VINCENT GO THE city of Manila marked the end of Lunar New Year celebrations with a cultural exhibit featuring performers from Suzhou, China. The end of the Chinese New Year, also celebrated as the Lantern Festival, fell on Feb. 24, which happened to be the 15th day of the first lunar

By PABLO A. TARIMAN  FILMS about hometowns are rare indeed and if they come, you get to share a part of the director’s rarely known childhood. Lino Brocka’s “Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang” is a classic example and it was a reflection of his childhood in San Jose, Nueva Ecija and perhaps, Donsol, Sorsogon where his