A tripartite cultural event dubbed “Orog sa Umay, Orog sa Ugay: A Musical Concert, A Tribute and a Book Launching” was held on September 15, 2024, at the Kamarin Art Gallery. This rare occasion coincided with the Third Bikol Book Festival along with the Centennial Commemoration of the Canonical Coronation of Our Lady of Peñafrancia. The event was conceptualized by Kristian Sendon Cordero who organized it under the auspices of the Savage Mind: Arts, Books, Cinema, a creative hub which he opened and operates in the City of Naga, along with the National Book Development Board. Orog sa Umay, Orog sa Ugay is described further as the performance of the sacred and profane in hybrid spaces.   

The standing room only concert featuring German trained soprano Ena Maria R. Aldecoa with composer Ronaldo S. Dolor at the piano began at seven in the evening. Both artists who hail from Bicol, are alumni of the University of the Philippines College of Music. Incidentally, Ena is also a concert pianist who for the occasion, brought to Kamarin her own piano along with some lighting and recording devices which her husband, Tom Frinta whom Ena describes as her “wind beneath my wings,” manned and busied himself with throughout the evening.

The recital of European art songs and sacred works came about as a collaboration, not only between two performers, but with Cordero, who framed the entire programme para-liturgically according to nine themes and alluding symbols associated with history of the devotion to Our Lady of Peñafrancia, whom Bicolano Catholics and Marian devotees fondly call “INA,” their spiritual mother, and patroness of Bicol. The concert’s title in Bikolano translates in English as: “more healing, more grace and compassion.” This, along with the nine themes, became the jump off point from which Ena based her selection of songs for the evening.  In this review, I will comment on the third, fourth, eighth and ninth themes of the well thought out programme subtitled respectively as:

• Coronation of INA
• The losing and finding of INA in 1981
• In remembrance of our departed loved ones
• Voyadores: the bearers of the devotion wherever we go

The coronation of Our Lady of Peñafrancia in 1924 which, is said to affirm the Blessed Virgin’s spiritual significance to Bicolano Catholics is musically commemorated by Ena’s choice of two pieces from the Exultate Jubilate KV 165 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). The Latin text of the solemn Tu virginum corona was sung first, followed by the oft sung and melismatic Alleluia which served to paint a festive tone to commemoration of the glorious event that took place one hundred years ago. For one accustomed to hearing extroverted interpretations of the Alleluia, it is very refreshing to hear Ena’s treatment of the piece. Here, she chose to remain jubilant, yet introspectively and with much restraint, perhaps because of her German training. Her liquid phrasing, precision of her trills, seamless runs and high notes that which Ena sang effortlessly just soared and filled the room to the delight and amazement of her audience, which comprised of both the familiar and new listeners of classical music for whom an occasion such as this is a rare treat.

The jubilant atmosphere set by the Alleluia momentarily becomes despondent as Cordero invites the audience to recall the theft and desecration of the image of Our Lady of Peñafrancia in 1981. Here, Ena fittingly chose to sing the haunting and emotionally packed Ave Maria by Giulio Caccini (1551-1618) which in my judgment did elicit the collective emotion of pain that comes with the loss of a sacred image long revered and believed to be miraculous by Marian devotees. In this opus, Caccini does not utilize the entire text of the Latin prayer. Instead, the composer sets to music a repetition of “Ave Maria” through the beautifully crafted lines of the oeuvre in minor key, which, as performed by Ena and Ronald, cut through the heart and soul of those whose collective memories of the image’s loss and desecration were awakened that night.  Ena’s sublime rendition was awe-inspiring for the singers in the audience, students undergoing classical training at the Saint Cecilia Conservatory of Music of the Universidad de Santa Isabel in Naga City. Two such who sat close  to me in the audience were NAMCYA 2023 finalist Kurt Jules Madrid, a counter tenor who hails from Libon, Albay and Izar Cohn “IC” Angeles, a young soprano from Naga City. After the concert, we all had to agree that Ms. Aldecoa has indeed mastered the art of seamlessly shifting from chest to head tone with the former so richly timbred (for a soprano with such a small frame), while the latter just floats lightly and effortlessly into the air.

At the eighth theme, just prior to the end of the concert, Cordero dedicates this moment to remember and honor six departed and respected creatives who have contributed to the artistic life of the pilgrim city. Among those remembered that night was Ena’s father, the late Luis Maco Aldecoa, a musician and music educator in Naga City. Cordero’s special guests that evening were enjoined to a toast as their glasses were refilled with wine and the departed loved ones, the creatives who have left a mark in the artistic landscape of Bicolandia are remembered . Here, Ena chose to sing the Pie Jesu from the Requiem, Op. 48 by Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) as a plea to the mercy of Christ to grant everlasting rest to those being remembered and honored that night.

The evening ends quasi-liturgically with Fr. Maximo Juguera’s Himno a la Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia where Cordero invited the audience to participate.  Those seated in the room that night rose from their seats and sang the familiar lyrics in Spanish, after which Ena, rendered the estrofas in the vernacular. This ritual act is concluded as the audience in the manner of a “congregation” doing their act of devotion to the Virgin of Peñafrancia, re-joins in the singing of “Resuene Vibrante” followed by “Viva, La Virgen” as their shouts of acclamations to the patron saint of Bicol.

Tonight’s event may be likened to a performance of ritual in hybrid spaces where the sacred and the profane intersect, the high and the low are juxtaposed – just as they do among the pilgrims in the cathedral, the basilica and in streets of the City of Naga during Peñafrancia. It is during these religious festivities that specific times, like the traslacion, the fluvial procession and especial to this year, the commemoration of the canonical coronation of Our Lady of Peñafrancia, are deemed auspicious. These religious rituals are interspersed with secular pageantry as the civic sectors and representative schools throughout Bicol find their place in the ritual space by performing and competing among themselves through simulations of military and scout parades, replete with the music of drum and lyre to which baton twirling majorettes march and dance on the streets.  Along with these, personal beauty is celebrated (or is it objectified?) through the annual search for and crowning of Miss Bicolandia during the festivities.  

In tonight’s concert, the “profane” is sacralized through Cordero’s framing of the concert programme in terms of the nine themes associated with the history of the devotion to Our Lady of Peñafrancia. The high and the low intersect as carefully selected German and French art songs are sung alongside sacred works in Latin, Spanish and the vernacular in info-recital form, and, where piped in music of Nora Aunor’s recording of Filipino folk songs are heard prior to and after the concert proper. The hybrid space created therein becomes a place in suspended time for shared moments where collective memories are recalled, where toasts, tributes, testimonials, and music making as acts of devotion are enacted.  True to the title’s aim – “Orog sa Umay: Orog sa Ugay” (a plea for more healing, for more grace and compassion), tonight’s concert did not only bring about “umay” (healing) and “ugay,“ but,  if I may so add – “orog sa kagayunan” (more beauty).

While the faithful cry out “Viva, La Virgen, Viva, El Divino Rostro,” during the festivities wherein this concert was organized, so I dare hail, “Viva to more creative endeavours in the Pilgrim City of Naga and the rest of Bicolandia! May such creative endeavours in the future bring more healing and blessings of grace and compassion and beauty to artists and creatives, the bearers of culture who choose to share them in places where they are welcomed and needed, and to art lovers in this part of the world whose parched and hungry souls long to be quenched and fed. Viva!

The header features a photo collage of the event in Kamarin Art Gallery (credit: Jerome Berja).

About the theater critic

Pianist, church musician, musicologist and religious worker LEO EVA REMPOLA holds the following degrees from the University of the Philippines College of Music: Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance and Master of Music in Musicology (UP College of Music) and Master of Divinity with honors from the Asian Theological Seminary. He is a candidate for the PhD in Music major in Ethnomusicology degree at the Philippine Women’s University.

Leo has performed as soloist and accompanist to various Filipino classical artists here and abroad as well as for local television. He has done musicological research in cultural politics and is currently doing work on music, ritual and religiosity. Prior to moving back to Bicolandia in 2017, Leo spent much of his life as a church musician serving as Associate Pastor for Liturgy and Music with the United Church of Christ in the Philippines while pursuing graduate studies, doing field research, teaching piano privately, church music and Asian religions in various seminaries and theological schools in Cavite and Manila. He is a member of the Piano Teachers’ Guild of the Philippines.

Leo currently works online as a metadata analyst and subject matter expert in theology and religion for an international knowledge processing company. On weekend, he serves as a volunteer pianist and choir trainer of the UCCP Naga Evangelical Church. He divides his time between work, ministry, field research when an opportunity arises and dissertation writing. 

Postscript

Sadly, Kristian Sendon Cordero’s creative spaces, Kamarin Art Gallery and Savage Mind: Arts, Books, Cinema, were inundated during Typhoon Kristine in October 2024. Ena Maria Aldecoa’s piano which she brought over to Kamarin for the concert was totally destroyed beyond repair by the flood waters.