Archive - Arts & Culture

With the world at stand still and the main thoroughfares of the world’s greatest cities silenced by corona virus, tenor Andrea Bocelli’s lone Easter Sunday performance in Milan provided the perfect time and venue to savor sacred music.

She calls herself “a mountain girl” who never enjoyed going to the beach even as a child. What sets her apart from family and friends is her being a horsewoman, the friend of Baguio’s pony boys and the sole Filipino competitor in this year’s grueling, 1,000-km., 7-10-day Mongol Derby.

Since the enhanced community quarantine and lockdown cancelled live classical music concerts, music aficionado Richard Sy-Facunda has been uploading music videos on Facebook and YouTube every morning. He called this “the product of the blood, sweat and tears by these musical artists.”

Like it or not, CLOY has given TV viewers a better alternative to the horrific midnight appearances of the president now visibly wane, tired and out of touch.

Iloilo City is also feeling the stress of corona virus.But it is coping beautifully with synchronized initiatives from both the public and private sectors.

Beneath the silence of the streets devoid of moving vehicles, the feeling of anxiety, fear and sadness is deeply palpable. Photos by Luis Liwanag.

Carmencita Sipin Aspiras has been asked many times if she was willing to record her piano playing. Her answer has always been a firm no.

I thought I’d never live to see deserted streets and empty church and empty schools before holy week.

Artists and cultural workers in the Philippines brace for difficult times as the Cultural Center of the Philippines closed, three major orchestras on forced vacation and so did several theater companies and independent promoters of classical music.

Retired University of the Philippines professor Victoria Rico Costina is one of the most underrated literary writers of Baguio. A bit receding where her gifts are concerned, Costina returns to the scene with a second book, And God Also Made a Cat: 90 Devotions for Cat People, which is a fine partner to her first, the out-of-print Those Who Love Cats.

The detritus of human existence takes on a creative twist in an exhibit entitled Cue from Life Itself: Filipino Artists Transform the Everyday. It runs until May 7, 2020 at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

Sculptor Julie Lluch apologized for her “awful habit of being preachy.” Nevertheless, her latest solo show “Irresistible Grace: In the Regime of the Plague” at Galerie Stephanie at Art Fair Philippines, The Link, Ayala Center, Makati also has a powerful political content, a protest in fact aimed at the face of strongman Rodrigo Duterte.

By turns professorial in demeanor when standing to face the audience and a personable performer on the Steinway piano, Clement Acevedo wowed a sparse Sunday audience at the Manila Pianos Inc. Artist Series at the Ronac Lifestyle Center in Paseo de Magallanes, Makati City.

A grand celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birth anniversary unfolds in Manila on Saturday February 22 with the country’s leading artists interpreting some of the composer’s works in special recitals.

This year’s Oscar award-winning actor Joaquin Phoenix reflected the politics of food in his acceptance speech when he said, “We go into the natural world, and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.”

Saturday last week on February 8, 2020 to be exact, Ballet Philippines Foundation president Kathleen L. Liechtenstein issued a memo announcing the appointment of Russian danseur Mikhail Martynyuk as the new artistic director of Ballet Philippines for the 51st and 52nd seasons for the years 2020 to 2022.

Friday night amidst scare of the corona virus, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor -- first performed in 1835 in Naples, Italy -- had a triumphant return at the Cultural Center of the Philippines where it was last seen in Pilipino version in 1976.

Like it or not, the mad scenes in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor pretty much reflect the country’s social and political landscape.