National Artist for Music Lucrecia Kasilag with National Artist for film Kidlat Tahimik at the Makiling Arts Center with Pablo Tariman and Johanna Cabili.
National Artist for Music Kasilag was recognized for including indigenous Filipino instruments in orchestral works. her works include over 350 musical compositions, ranging from folk songs to opera and orchestral pieces.
Among her works are Love Songs, Legend of the Sarimanok, Ang Pamana, Philippine Scenes, Her Son, Jose, Sisa and chamber music like Awit ng mga Awit Psalms, Fantaisie on a 4-Note Theme, and East Meets Jazz Ethnika.
The concert will be capped by Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 5, D.485, B-flat Major under the baton of Maestro Grzegorz Nowak.
My last precious moments with the National Artist for Music I fondly call “Tita King” were at the launch of her autobiography, “Lucrecia Roces Kasilag: My Story,” when she was 79. By then, she was hard of hearing, nearly blind and always on a wheelchair.
She pulled me aside with her book and signed it: “To dear Pablo, ‘My Story’ is all yours to talk about. Love, Tita King—January 15, 2000.”
Ten years later, in 2008, she passed away at age 89, 15 days short of turning 90.
I remember rushing an obituary that was difficult to write. The country lost a National Artist. I lost a friend and a music mentor who encouraged my music festivals on the island even knowing fully I was operating on zero budget.
In August 2018, Tita King’s 100th birth year was celebrated with musicians and friends giving her a big tribute at the Cultural Center of the Philippines which she headed for 17 years.
I did share her music, but more than that, I shared her life long after her CCP term and long after she became National Artist for Music.
She was my special music lecturer when I founded the 1992 Catanduanes Summer Music Festival. She did a lecture on music in Tingog Center in Bato town, and another at the Risen Christ Hall in Virac town.
The former CCP president with Cecile Licad and her father, Dr. Jesus V. Licad.
She loved the island’s shorelines and the clear placid sea between Virac and Bato that she thought looked like New Zealand.
In this lecture, she talked about ethnic music instruments and called for volunteers to play chamber music with her. She wouldn’t stop until she had convinced her audience that music didn’t begin and end with Western composers.
Before the lecture, backstage, I told her there was no elaborate dressing room in this island venue. “No problem, Pablo,” she said. “Just close your eyes and I will quickly change into my lecture and performance attire.”
It is a grand coincidence that I met Tita King and the then child piano prodigy, Cecile Licad, in Legazpi City, and in the same year: 1975.
Licad and Tita King stayed in the house of the late former Albay judge Jesus Rebustillo and ballet teacher Dehlia Napay Rebustillo.
Part of this family was Albay composer Everardo Napay (Dehlia Rebustillo’s brother), an architect. Napay, in consultation with Tita King, dreamed of an Albay Cultural Center, complete with the laying of a cornerstone in that part of land between the Albay barracks and a hospital.
That dream was never realized, but Tita King, then CCP president, gave Albay its first glimpse of a 14-year-old Licad as part of CCP’s outreach program.
This was 13 years before she became National Artist and five years before Licad would become the first Filipino, perhaps the first Asian, to receive the Leventritt Gold Medal in New York. (It is the same award that went to eminent pianists Van Cliburn and Gary Graffman.)
Accompanying Tita King while revisiting the Albay landmarks she had known in her youth in 1975, we visited Camalig Church. She said her family lived for a while in Albay when her father, Marcial Kasilag (then with the Department of Public Works), was assigned to oversee road and bridge construction.
Tita King recalled how the family never once used her father’s official car, conscious it was about proper decorum for government officials.
In 1975, Tita King gave the Rebustillo family in Albay tickets to the CCP concert of Licad who played three concertos in one evening. I was part of this Albay entourage.
After my first CCP exposure that year, I became a frequent theatergoer with unlimited theater passes, courtesy of Tita King.
After Licad, I saw a San Francisco Opera production of “Tosca” at CCP, with no less than Placido Domingo singing the role of Cavaradossi.
Cover of Dr. Kasilag’s autobiography.
It was then that I stopped writing about travel and crime and turned to the performing arts. My education in the arts reached a high point in 1980, when I joined the CCP’s media office as editor of its Arts Monthly.
Since I also wrote press releases for CCP shows as part of my job, I got to know the inside stories behind every engagement.
During her CCP term, I got to watch the Bolshoi Ballet, soprano Montserrat Caballe, pianist Andre Watts, conductor Henry Lewis and the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, among many others.
The talent fee of Rostropovich at the time (early ’80s) was $25,000. To Tita King’s surprise, after the performance, the legendary cellist returned the check as donation to CCP.
It was also during her CCP term that I would frequent her home in Perdigon, Paco, and have breakfast or lunch with her on weekends.
It was here that I would get a glimpse of the souvenirs from her youth—she played Felix Mendelssohn’s “May Breezes” in a student recital at age 12. She had her tomboyish teens, once leaping from the rooftop and falling through the kitchen roof, which left her with bleeding nose and bruised arms.
Did Tita King ever have a love life?
In her autobiography, Tita King wrote about a frequent visitor (initials DM) who owned a large printing press. His frequent visits became known to Tita King’s inner circle, and former CCP president Bing Roxas would tease her about it.
One such courtship dialogue went like this:
“I’m 80,” suitor declared, “and you are 70. Why don’t we just get together? We are made for each other, you know.”
Some cheek, she said in her mind.
“What’s more,” he continued, “I have enough money. I saved up P3 million I discovered in the safe where my wife had kept it.”
She told the poor suitor that the money belonged to his children who seemed to encourage their father’s outpouring of love.
Cover of April 19 PPO concert.
Tall and silver-haired, Tita King’s suitor pressed his intentions right there at the CCP. As always, she would show him the door, saying she was quite busy.
Wrote Tita King: “At every threshold in my life, there seemed to be one gentleman or another wanting to enter my life.”
On this her 100th year, I remember Tita King not just for her compositions, but also for her being a persistent music educator.
On top of that, she was a warm human being able to share jokes with this islander she ushered into the CCP for the first time in 1975.
“You know, Pablo,” she would say. “Music appeals to people of varied persuasions. But sadly, many love music that appeals to the feet rather than to your heart and mind. That is why we have to constantly educate and reach out to the provinces.”
On the night CCP gave her a big tribute, I recalled Tita King, inspired and resolute as ever, making music with both teachers and students in Catanduanes.
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From the CCP mailbox: The Cultural Center of the Philippines has announced new appointments to its Board of Trustees, namely Isidro A. Consunji, Jonathan Velasco, Felix “Monino” Duque, Atty. Gizela M. Gonzalez, and Carissa Coscolluela.
The newly appointed CCP Trustees bring with them a wealth of experiences from their engagement in the private, public, and government sectors.
“The CCP is stronger with the new appointments by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. The new trustees, I believe, will greatly contribute to theater management, law, engineering and construction, and artistic productions,” said CCP Chairman Jaime C. Laya.
The CCP Board of Trustees during the CCP General Assembly held at the Tanghalang Ignacio B. Gimenez: (from left) Isidro A. Consunji, Jonathan M. Velasco, Dr. Jaime C. Laya, Atty. Gizela M. Gonzalez, Margie Moran-Floirendo, Junie S. Del Mundo, Felix S. Duque. Not in photo: Marivic del Pilar and Carissa Coscolluella.
Earning his degree in civil engineering from the University of the Philippines and a master’s in business administration from the Asian Institute of Management, Consunji is currently the chief executive officer of Semirara Mining Corporation and DMCI Holdings Inc.
Currently a lecturer of voice at the UP College of Music, Jonathan Velasco is a member and assistant conductor of the World Youth Choir. Together with his choirs, he has won first prizes in choral competitions in Slovenia, Ireland, Germany, and Spain. He is the conductor of the Ateneo Chamber Singers.
Monino Duque returns to CCP with a new role. He served as the theater director of the institution from 1973 to 1994. He has designed numerous productions at the CCP, including Tales of Manuvu, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, and Madame Butterfly, among others.
With a Master of Law degree from Harvard, Gizela M. Gonzalez has expertise in corporate and intellectual property. A director of several corporations and trustee of various non-profit organizations, Atty. Gonzalez continues to champion poverty alleviation by addressing basic human needs.
A Filipino humanitarian and politician, Carissa Coscolluela is currently part of the Philippine Ballet Theatre Board of Trustees. A governor of the Philippine Red Cross, Coscolluela is also a member of the Helgstrand Dressage, one of the world’s most decorated and successful stables for the training and selling of dressage horses.
The new appointees will join the other Trustees, namely Chairman Laya and Trustee Junie del Mundo, who were reappointed by President Marcos, and interim Trustees Maria Margarita Moran-Floirendo and Marivic del Pilar to lead the CCP in fulfilling its vision of promoting arts and culture in the Philippines.
Arts News Service 