VERA Files
GERARD Salonga is emerging to be a star all his own. The brother of multi-awarded international singer Lea Salonga, Gerard is carving a place in another musical field: conducting.
RICHARD Merk, jazz singer, comic singing host and owner of Merk’s Bar and Bistro at Greenbelt 3, Ayala Center, Makati City, regards his diminutive mother,Annie Brazil, as still the undisputed Asian queen of jazz at age 77.
WHEN Manang Bolabola came out, there was a new doll in her secret room, with eyes the color of twilight that had been grazed by the twinkle of the first evening star.
COMPETITION prizewinners are again in the news in Manila’s music scene as Russian pianist Sofia Gulyak debuts in Manila Oct. 14 at the Philamlife Theater.
By ELIZABETH LOLARGA “And in keeping with his oft-repeated philosophical belief that novels should enhance and amplify life, not merely recount it, he has taken some liberties with history. But he quickly adds that ‘with essential facts, I have been loyal.’”–interview with Mario Vargas Llosa in January Magazine, 2002. It is a fact of literary […]
THERE was one scene in the recently concluded television soap opera Momay that belittled children studying in public schools: Character actress Glydel Mercado, playing the role of a mother, told her nephew, “O ikaw Jay-jay, sa public school ka nalang mag-aral kasi bobo ka naman (You, Jay-jay, will go to public school because you’re dumb).”
By KIM ARVEEN M. PATRIA MUSIC broke the silence of a humid Monday afternoon in a small neighborhood in San Pablo City. Inside a school gymnasium along a poorly paved road, a rondalla, an ensemble of string instruments, rehearsed melodic pieces for everyone to hear—everyone except those playing them. Those who held the guitars, the […]