A Fusion of Tolerance and Appreciation (Bonifacio High Street)
Inquirer 5/18/2008
If music is food for the soul, then we’re addicted to junk food.
“We consume a lot of music, but it’s only one kind of music,” says multi-awarded composer and conductor Josefino “Chino” Toledo.
The kind of shallow, disposable pop that the mass media inject into our ears 24/7 is blunting our musical taste. All our much-vaunted musical talent counts for naught, because there’s no point in being good at making bad music.
“It’s like eating hamburgers your whole life,” continues Toledo. “There’s nothing wrong with that, except that you might get sick. You also lose the chance to explore other kinds of expression, to feel other rhythms. Like it said in ’August Rush,’ harmonics is what binds everything. Even in silence, you can hear a sound--and that’s the fundamental note of your life, the sound of the blood running through your veins.”
The antidote to the creeping dumbing down of our musical taste, says this conductor, is simply to open our ears a little wider and embrace new musical experiences. It’s all there for the hearing: all you have to do is listen.
One popular venue for new and exciting musical expressions is Passion Fest ’08, which is geared towards affirming the image of Bonifacio Global City as “the home of passionate minds” by providing residents and visitors with world-class experiences that are current, cutting-edge, newsworthy and perspective-changing.
Passion Fest ’08 offers a unique convergence of art and modern urban lifestyles by providing progressive Filipino visual and musical artists with a venue for showcasing their works right where their audiences live, work and play. In doing so, this summer event at Bonifacio Global City takes art out of the ivory tower and into people’s real lives, where it surely belongs.
The culminating musical event for this year’s Passion Fest ’08 is “Fusion,” to be held May 31 at 8 p.m. at Bonifacio High Street. “Fusion” will showcase Toledo conducting the Metro Manila Community Orchestra (MMCO) and the UP Jazz Ensemble in an epochal musical experience that should blast those inane pop tunes out of your ears for good.
The idea of fusing jazz and classical music is nothing new: it began almost as soon as the two genres encountered each other. Stravinsky and Gershwin, among others, showed a keen ear for the musical complexities of jazz. For their part, jazz artists such as Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus were equally open to incorporating classical elements in their compositions.
“Our concept is rather new, the superimposition of a jazz ensemble and a symphony orchestra, with equal representation of the characteristics of both,” says Toledo, who apart from being the director of the MMCO also teaches at the UP College of Music, the home base of the UP Jazz Ensemble.
“The repertoire wasn’t conceptualized as a linear program,” he says. “This is more of a ’photo album’ kind of repertoire, where you’ll hear a kundiman played by a sax, followed by an excerpt from a musical. There’ll be an opera piece, an Eraserheads piece, pieces from the Manila sound of the ’70s and ’80s, Glenn Miller, cartoon music. The excitement is built from that, that you don’t expect what’s coming next. It will be eclectic, but it won’t be eclecticism for the sake of eclecticism. The excitement will be built on the notion that you don’t know what’s coming next.”
He adds: “It’s like a Pacquiao fight--you don’t know where the next punch will be coming from.”
For Toledo, part of the excitement of Fusion comes from bringing 80-plus musicians together on one stage on Bonifacio High Street.
“The concept of performance venue has been changing over the last several decades,” he explains. “It used to be the church. Then people stopped going to church, so it became the concert hall. Now people have stopped going to concert halls. People are here (in malling areas), so we might as well use this. I think from the point of view of classical artists, there has been a paradigm shift: it used to be that the focus was on you spotlighted on stage, now the focus is on you and on Starbucks, which I think is more acceptable now in the age of postmodernism when people can appreciate both classical music and Starbucks. It’s no longer as foreign as before when the two were really separate.”
Continues Toledo: “Fusion is not just an idea, it’s a reality. Everything in music is a fusion. You can look at fusion as tolerance, and appreciation. If you don’t like jazz you’ll listen because of the classical music, and if you don’t like classical music you’ll still listen because of the jazz.”
In the end, everyone goes home with bigger ears and expanded musical horizons.
The critically-acclaimed Toledo is the ideal choice for Passion Fest. “You can’t be a musician if you don’t have a passion for music,” he says.
The late National Artist for Dance Leonor Goquingco called Toledo “one of the (Philippines’) finest and best conductors ever.” His own music has been described as “pure and powerful,” and has been cited for its fusion of contemporary Western language and Southeast Asian aesthetics. Music critic Rosalinda Orosa described Toledo as “a composer-conductor of considerable worth” and “…an ingenious, remarkably original composer of singular creativity and imagination.” He has received both the TOYM Award and the International Award for the Arts. A product of the UP College of Music, where he is now a professor of music composition and theory, Toledo has been noted for premiering the works of Filipino and other Asian composers.
“Music can be a catalyst for change, but not if you’re only a consumer of music,” says Toledo. “It’s the training in music that can change the way you experience everything.”
The other Passion Fest ’08 events revolve around the passion for arts. The outdoor installation art by young new generation artists Bea Camacho, Gary-Ross Pastrana and Ringo Bunoan, which collectively redefine common ideas on public art, remains on view at Bonifacio High Street until May 30. The Lomowall exhibit runs until May 31 at the BHS as well.
Among the other Passion Fest ’08 offerings were the First Bonifacio Global City Alley Cat Race held last May 4, a bike race that followed on the heels of the 4th Bonifacio Global City Fun Run last April 20. The music events featured various performances of fashion designer Kate Torralba, Vince Lahorra, and the Brass Munkeys. For art, walking tours host Carlos Celdran led an interactive tour of public art at BHS with his Art Walk last May 3 and 17, where he discussed the artworks of the Bonifacio Art Foundation Inc., as well as the artists’ creative spirit and source of inspiration.
“Fusion” is open to the public and people with passion for music may avail themselves of seat reservations. Seat stubs may be claimed at the Serendra concierge starting May 11, 2008. The stubs will be given to the first 200 customers on a first come, first served basis. For more information, please call 856-0523.