The Spy in the Sandwich

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

10:08 PM | Strings at Ritual

You could say it was a Dumaguete kind of evening. Very D.I.Y. Very chill. So cultural. Inside Ritual—the zero-waste grocery store at the Arts and Design Collective Dumaguete along E.J. Blanco Drive, which now apparently moonlights as a performance space—monobloc chairs were being unstacked and arranged not by some invisible stage crew, but by the musicians about to do mini-concert. There was something disarming about seeing Reginald Bernaldez and Gonzalo Misa setting down chairs like they’re also in charge of the barangay fiesta seating plan. It was like catching superheroes folding laundry before saving the day.

The intimacy was immediate, the space itself smelling faintly of laurel, cinnamon, lye, baking soda, and laundry soap. This wasn’t a concert hall; it was a living room with a conscience, and last August 9, it belongs to five of Dumaguete’s best musicians.

The night began with François Champion’s “Gavotte” and Joseph Kuffner’s “Andantino,” a duet between Venus Seno-Bernaldez on the flute and Reggie Bernaldez on the guitar. The pairing was like wind over water: the flute’s clear silver thread sailing over the calm ripples of the guitar—which Reggie later acknowledged: “The flute really overpowers the guitar. Which is why I am in tandem with my wife, Venus,” he joked to the appreciative crowd. I really don’t know much about classical guitar beyond the occasional recitals I attend, but I can tell when musicians are listening to each other to create a good duet. In “Andantino,” Venus leaned ever so slightly toward Reggie in the softer passages, and his playing seemed to rise under hers. I know these two from my college days, and it was fantastic to see them play together again.

Then Reggie himself took to the stage alone for Francisco Tárrega’s “Capricho Árabe”—a piece whose title promised Moorish longing and delivered exactly that. The opening was a delicate question, like a traveler at the edge of a strange city; halfway through, the melody blossoms into something almost defiant. By the time Reggie closed with Miguel Llobet’s “Cançó del Lladre,” I was convinced the titular thief was also a romantic one, stealing my heart in that small room at Ritual.

Rav Rocamora soon stepped in next with Ariel Ramírez’s “Balada Para Martín Fierro.” Kuya Rav has always struck me as a gentle presence—maybe from those childhood days I’ve known of him as a fellow churchmate and elder at Calvary Chapel—but his guitar here was a storyteller’s grit. The piece unspooled like an epic poem, tender in one phrase and stormy in the next. With Dilermando Reis’ “Eterna Saudade,” he offered a quieter ache, a saudade so precise it felt like the memory of a special late afternoon.

Arnold Franke followed with Abel Carlevaro’s “Preludios Americanos,” and here the music felt almost painterly—expressionistic and experimental. There was something in Arnold’s posture—shoulders relaxed, gaze steady—that made the complexity of his playing look deceptively easy. I would later learn he studied music in Tilburg, Netherlands, but in that moment of his playing, he was the embodiment of the naturalness of his sound.

And then there was Gonzalo Misa, who stormed in with Nikita Koshkin’s “Usher Waltz,” a piece as dramatic as its literary inspiration—Edgar Alan Poe’s iconic story. It was gothic and playful, moody and whimsical, and Gonzalo leaned into every shift in tempo like an actor changing masks mid-scene. Watching his fingers was dizzying; they darted, paused, and darted again like they were in on some private world.

For the finale, Gonzalo and Arnold paired up for Christian Gottlieb Scheidler’s “Sonata in D Major.” They wielded two antique guitars, and with these had a conversation that was sometimes harmonious, sometimes argumentative, and always fascinating. The first movement felt like two old friends recalling an adventure; the second was like those same friends, years later, laughing at how serious they used to be.

When the last chord faded, there was roaring applause from the small audience who gathered at Ritual—a warm, sustained clapping, the kind that said: “We know you. We see you. Thank you for making this city more beautiful tonight.”

Outside Ritual that Saturday night, the air was cool. I think of how, in this small city by the sea, music doesn’t always need a proscenium or velvet seats for magic to happen. Sometimes it only needs five friends, a grocery that believes in zero waste, and a few rented monobloc chairs back. And for all my confessed ignorance about classical guitar technique, I left certain of one thing: when Dumaguete’s finest play, the music is never just notes. It is the whole city, plucked and strummed into being.