Friday, August 08, 2025
9:52 PM |
The Pianist as Pinoy
There is a word in music that feels like an apt description for the way pianist Horacio Nuguid plays: “cantabile”—which means the smooth quality of making the instrument sing. This was the thought that stayed with me through Sound Scapes, his piano recital of rare and resplendent works from the Filipino classical repertoire, which unfolded simply and beautifully on the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium stage last 6 August 2025—a respite we didn’t think we needed in the middle of the week. In an age where music-making often feels like a gladiatorial sport—faster, louder, more technically dazzling—Nuguid sat before the instrument with the calm assurance of someone who had nothing to prove. And in that unhurried humility, there was magic.
Nuguid is no stranger to the world’s stages. Trained at the University of Santo Tomas, he would later take his craft to the University of Northern Iowa and to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His career has taken him from solo recitals to orchestral collaborations in the Philippines, Mexico, and the United States, and into close musical partnerships with distinguished singers and instrumentalists.
As artistic director of the Rochester Chamber Music Society, he has carved out a space for music-making that is both intimate and expansive. Honors have followed—among them the Ardee Award for outstanding artist in Rochester—and so has a commitment to teaching: master classes across continents, decades of shaping young pianists at the Young Artist World Piano Festival in Minnesota, and mentorship at the Philippine High School for the Arts. Recently, he has taken on the role of co-artistic director at the Bethel University Summer Piano Academy, continuing the work of nurturing the next generation, even as he brings the voices of our past composers back into the light.
It is with that pedigree that Nuguid makes his debut in Dumaguete, on the Luce stage. The program of Sound Scapes was itself an act of reclamation, designed that way by the pianist. According to him, in the Philippines, so much of our music’s history lies in dust and disappearance—scores lost to war, to neglect, to the indifference of cultural gatekeepers. Nuguid has made it his mission to retrieve these works from obscurity, curating and publishing an anthology—Philippine Piano Pieces (2023)—that has suddenly opened a long-closed window into our pianistic past. Sound Scapes at the Luce was the living and breathing embodiment of that project: nine pieces by nine Filipino composers, spanning decades, styles, and sensibilities, each given a voice on this night in Dumaguete. He proceeded through the program like a lecturer, introducing the importance of each piece at the podium, and then sitting down before the grand piano to demonstrate the wonderfully musicality he had just described.
From the very first notes of “Caricias (Danza)” by Juan de Saliagun Hernandez (1881–1945), who was known as a composer of dances, marches, and music for theatrical performances, it was clear that Nuguid was not merely reproducing what was on the score. His left hand, rich with warm bass resonance, grounded the dance’s rhythm; his right hand let the melody float in the air with limpid clarity. The contrast was a quiet marvel—you could almost “see” the separation of musical notes, and yet they conversed so naturally.
“Poeme” by Carmencita Arambulo (1938–2023) was another personal highlight for me. The 1957 piece is, like what it subtitle claims, “a song without words,” which Nuguid rendered with a tenderness that felt almost private, like overhearing someone’s cherished memory. He let the melody breathe, resisting the temptation to rush. At his age—seasoned, yes, with perhaps the occasional elasticity in tempo—there was no need for metronomic precision. Instead, there was the deeper rhythm of someone shaping a phrase to match the heartbeat of this beautiful song.
“Okaka (Theme and Variations)” by Rodolfo Cornejo (1909–1991) was the program’s playful centerpiece, an intricate work that tested the pianist’s dexterity and interpretive range. Nuguid navigated its shifting moods with ease, from the almost childlike charm of the theme to the more dramatic, harmonically adventurous variations. And then there was “Bontok Ili” by Rosendo Santos Jr. (1922–1994), a piece steeped in indigenous echoes, where Nuguid’s left-hand ostinatos—a continually repeated musical phrase or rhythm—pulsed like ritual drumbeats while the right hand spun modal melodies like threads of smoke.
One of the evening’s most quietly moving moments, at least for me, was “Meditacion (Nocturno)” by Filemon Sotto (1872–1966). Here, Nuguid leaned into the music’s meditative intent, letting each chord shimmer and fade, as if allowing the audience to listen not only to the sound but also to the silence that followed. In contrast, “Tarantelle No. 2” by Lucino Sacramento (1908–1984), which the composer wrote for a NAMCYA competition in 1978, burst forth with kinetic energy—and though Nuguid’s tempo was, by necessity, tempered, the rhythmic drive and the joy in the playing were intact.
When Nuguid arrived at “Kundiman” by Felipe Padilla de Leon (1912–1992), the recital shifted into something unmistakably Filipino. The bittersweet lyricism, the gentle swells of emotion… Nuguid played it as though telling a love story across generations. Nuguid’s rendition of “Malikmata” by Antonio Molina (1894–1980) shimmered with impressionistic colors, like a heavy dream one tries to recall in the morning light, unsettling but also bemusing. And finally, “Mayon (Fantasia de Concierto)” by Francisco Buencamino Sr. (1883–1952) closed the concert with a sense of Pinoy grandeur, its elevated folksiness made beautiful with Nuguid weaving together the virtuosity and lyricism that mark the best of our piano literature.
What struck me most, across all these works, was the utter lack of pretension in Nuguid’s playing. Nuguid did not play to impress. He played because this music deserved to be heard again. He played because these scores—many of them once teetering on the edge of oblivion—still had beauty to give. He played because, quite simply, he loved them. And we, listening, were made to love them too.
There were no flamboyant gestures, no exaggerated rubatos meant to elicit gasps. Even the occasional unevenness in tempo seemed part of the music’s lived-in honesty. In an era obsessed with perfection, this was a concert that embraced humanity—its frailty, yes, but also its capacity for grace.
By the final applause—and I was really surprised by the gusto of the audience after many years of watching piano recitals eliciting only tepid responses—I realized what Sound Scapes truly was: not just a recital, but an act of cultural memory. Nuguid had taken us on a journey through our own musical heritage, dusting off forgotten pages and giving them breath again. And as we filed out of the Luce, it felt less like leaving a performance and more like emerging from a long, nourishing conversation, one where every melody had been clear, every note had mattered, and the silences between them had spoken volumes.
Truth to tell, I was not really aware of Philippine piano music much until last Wednesday night. What the concert taught me is that it is a most curious and beautiful thing, a garden of melodies where Spanish-European grace, American verve, and the deep earthiness of our own indigenous rhythms mingle in unexpected bloom. (Forgive the flowery metaphor!) But apparently, like many gardens in our history, much of it has been left untended, its flowers hidden from view. The tragedy is partly logistical: pianists have simply not had access to the printed scores. The few that made it into print—often through the composer’s own efforts—have long since slipped out of circulation, their surviving copies asleep in library archives, or kept as delicate heirlooms, or ravaged by World War II, a fraught period when untold manuscripts and printed scores vanished in the fire and rubble.
But Nuguid’s work tells us that this story does not end in loss. In recent years, there has been a gathering tide of interest in finding these scattered notes, in piecing together a legacy nearly lost. And in August 2023, Nuguid stepped into this story with something remarkable: a published anthology of twenty-five piano pieces by sixteen Filipino composers, each work lovingly rescued, critically edited, and annotated for a new generation. The book and the concert are both an act of scholarship and an act of devotion.
You can listen to most of these piece in Horacio Nuguid’s YouTube channel. The concert was sponsored by the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council. Thanks to Dr. Elizabeth Susan Vista-Suarez for explaining the technicalities of the piano-playing for me.
Labels: art and culture, classical music, dumaguete, luce, music, philippine culture, pianists, silliman
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, August 01, 2025
10:00 PM |
Swans Descending in Dumaguete
My former journalism mentor in high school—she’s the current Dean of the College of Education at Silliman University—was effusive upon seeing Ballet Manila’s production of Swan Lake last week, on its final night at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium: “I was in tears when I left the Luce tonight, overwhelmed by a mix of emotions,” Dr. Gina Fontejon-Bonior wrote on Facebook. “I needed this moment at the Luce, immersed in an evening of love, beauty, and grace—after a long workweek, and a heartbreaking news about the health condition of someone I deeply care about. Salamat kaayo, Silliman University Culture and Arts Council, for bringing the artistic creation of Lisa Macuja-Elizalde back to Dumaguete, … for the breath of hope and grace.”
That kind of testimony lingers more than most, I think. More than actual reviews even—which is why I have opted to center this column with Dr. Bonior’s emotive impressions of the ballet. And how do I even begin to review Ballet Manila’s Swan Lake, with Ms. Macuja-Elizalde in her creative peak? I won’t even try. I will try to write about it in a different way.
You hold on to testaments like Dr. Bonior’s it like a talisman, something to pull out when the world begins to unravel. Because the truth is, we’re all slowly unraveling. And if the ache of ordinary life, like illness or bureaucracy or the grief that never leaves you, does not do you in, it’s the quiet despair that comes from scrolling endlessly through your phone in the dead of night, seeking feeling in a world too numbed out to offer it. And then a white bird flies across a hallowed stage in Dumaguete, pirouettes in anguish, and suddenly your chest opens.
What is it about Swan Lake?
It’s a ballet that, by all measures, should be a relic: composed in 1875 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, borne out of the romanticism of a bygone era, stuffed with royal courts and enchanted lakes and girls turning into swans. But it survives, not just in gilded theaters in Moscow or London, but here in Dumaguete—under the shadow of acacia trees, where the salt of Bohol Sea clings to your skin even in the air-conditioned dark of the Luce.
It survives, I think, because it haunts us.
Because it is, at its core, a tragedy of transformation, of doomed love, of becoming something else entirely just to survive. And isn’t that what we all do? The ballerina, at the height of her dance, becomes the swan—and you forget that it is human limbs that tremble and leap and flutter. You see the feather, the wing, the pain of flight.
Lisa Macuja-Elizalde and Ballet Manila know this, embody this. And in Dumaguete, that knowledge is received not passively, but with deep and trembling gratitude. Here, I would like to believe that we are not jaded by art. Here, when a ballerina flutters to her death in a fog of heartbreak, someone in the back row weeps silently—and means it. [This is very true! In the performance that I saw, the audience I was with were rapturous when our swan leapt to its romantic demise!] Maybe that’s why Dumaguete is still the kind of city where a ballet like Swan Lake matters. Because we haven’t lost our capacity to believe in beauty. Or to mourn it.
As a teenage high schooler working for The Junior Sillimanian, I was taught by Dr. Bonior [always Ma’am Gina to me] to be precise in my reporting, to sum up a story best in a perfect opening paragraph. She taught me to feel with structured language. And now here she is, decades later, watching a girl in a tutu die for love and magic, and sobbing in the darkness. I think there’s poetry in that.
There’s a kind of redemption in being allowed to feel deeply. It doesn’t happen enough.
Maybe that’s what Swan Lake offers: not just its well-worn story of Prince Siegfried and the cursed Odette and her dark double Odile and the malevolent Von Rothbart, but the whole aching ritual of it. The careful discipline of classical ballet, with its merciless demands on the human body [Ballet Manila, for Dumaguete, did the unthinkable and danced a punishing total of six shows in a row in four days!], and its impossible grace. Every movement honed through pain. Every step a sacrifice. And yet, it is through that rigor a transcendence arrives.
Lisa Macuja-Elizalde, who once danced these roles herself, has now given her dancers the gift of that same transcendence that we, in Dumaguete, got to witness, which is nothing short of a blessing. A miracle, even. Because we are far from the cultural centers of the country. We do not have the reach of Manila, or the glitter of CCP galas. But we have the Luce. We have the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council and its indefatigable leader, Diomar Abrio, with his stubborn devotion to the idea that Silliman University and Dumaguete deserve to see the best this country has to offer. That we are not too small. That art is not a luxury—it is the lifeline.
And so this is why Swan Lake endures, at least for us. Not because of nostalgia, but because of its ability to speak to us across centuries and geographies, across languages and generations. It tells us that love can redeem, even if too late. That betrayal can destroy, but also set one free. That sometimes, becoming a swan is the only way to escape.
And here, in this seaside university town where students still write poetry on napkins in cafés, where strangers say thank you after watching a play, where grief is softened by music echoing from the Rizal Boulevard, Swan Lake finds an audience that doesn’t just watch—but listens. Feels. Believes.
So yes, bring back Odette to our stage. Let her dance again and again in our city. Let her leap and fall, rise and vanish. We will always watch. We will always weep. And somewhere in that act, in that collective surrender to beauty, we are healed. Even if just for one night. Because in Dumaguete, Swan Lake doesn’t end with a curtain call. It stays.
Labels: art and culture, ballet, cultural affairs committee, dance, dumaguete, luce, silliman
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, October 06, 2023
12:00 PM |
A Center for the Arts: The Story of the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium
Today is the 49th anniversary of the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium. To celebrate, I’m sharing here an essay written by Zara Marie Dy on the history of its construction for Handulantaw: 50 Years of Culture and the Arts, a coffeetable book I edited in 2013:
Silliman University’s affair with culture and the arts dates back to the first decade of the school’s existence when, in 1911, the tradition of a Commencement drama began. The “Pyramus and Thisbe” scene from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was rendered, and in the next year, The Merchant of Venice was presented in its entirety for the first time, with an all-male cast, as was the case before the coming of girls to Silliman in 1912. This custom continued for over fourteen years and was much awaited by the people and the students.
A few decades later, the chance finally came to clear the old athletic field. This field was where the Silliman gymnasium would rise. The new gymnasium was a U.S. Army surplus airplane hangar, dismantled and transported all the way from Leyte, and rebuilt on the west end of the old ball field. Its beginnings were humble enough, but little did the University community realize that this airplane hangar would soon be the stage where budding local performers and culturati would thrive.
The rich history of Silliman’s cultural life traverses makeshift stages, the lust for performance making do with any available platform. Such was the insatiable thirst for the arts in the University. Mr. Rudy Juan, a notable authority on Silliman culture with an impressive and well-preserved collection of playbills and programmes, fondly compares the gym to the Auditorium in theological terms, like rising from “the pit to the pulpit.” Imagine the Le Grand Ballet Classique de France pirouetting inside an old hangar, or violin virtuoso Gilopez Kabayao passionately bending his bow in a concert at the gymnasium, which was noisy when it rained and hot when it did not.
All this cultural sagacity does not come as a surprise. Apart from the theatrical performances birthed during the Commencement tradition, music had taken deep root in the University as well. In 1946, a School of Music was drawn out from the foundations of the pre-war music conservatory. Twenty years later, the School of Music was established as a separate academic unit, which thrived in the University and beyond.
Despite its perennially small student population, the School of Music found itself heralding many a school activity. It was responsible for all music programmes of the Church and the University at the time, shifting roles as university orchestra, ROTC band, Folk Arts Ensemble, Church choir, and all other imaginable musical designations. Its annual recitals and tours had become a well-established tradition, and before long the School of Music’s reach extended beyond the Gates of Opportunity, touching music lovers in various parts of the country. Notably, the Folk Arts Ensemble, organized and trained by Priscilla Magdamo and Ruth Imperial, gave concerts in more than fifty cities and towns throughout the country. This contributed significantly toward developing greater public appreciation for traditional Philippine music, which further solidified Silliman’s place as the center of culture in the Visayas.
It did not stop there. There was ballet, too, first offered in 1961 by Lucy P. Jumawan, a Silliman High School alumna who studied at the Anita Kane Ballet School in Manila. Mrs. Jumawan eventually joined the Music School faculty and by 1966 she had organized a highly-rated dance group, which served as the forerunner of the Silliman University Dance roupe.
It is no wonder then that by the time the Luce Auditorium was ready to open its doors, you could hardly get a seat despite its original 923 seating capacity. Mr. Juan recalls that by the time Gilopez Kabayao moved his concerts from the Gym to the Auditorium, he was received with “ceiling-breaking applause” as everyone had waited for so long to hear his violin sound suspended instead of dissipated.
* * *
But to put everything in historical context, we begin by acknowledging that cultural venues in the Philippines were such that, before the turn of the 20th century, artistic performances were primarily held in plazas and other public places all over the country. In the capital, the primary venue for stage plays, operas, and zarzuelas was the Manila Grand Opera House, which was constructed in the mid-19th century.
In 1931, the Metropolitan Theater was built. Additionally, smaller but adequately equipped auditoriums in the Ateneo de Manila and Far Eastern University, as well as Meralco and PhilAm Life, improved conditions for the staging of culture and the arts in Manila. Manila and Dumaguete were equal in the struggle to host art and culture as priorities in developing communities.
At about the same time that Dr. Cicero Calderon began his campaign “to build a greater Silliman” (which subsequently gave birth to the plans for a Cultural Center in the University), the Philippine-American Cultural Foundation started to raise funds for a new theater in Manila to be designed by Leandro Locsin. There was muted unrest as the need to erect a structure dedicated to staging performances lingered over the visionaries of the time. One such prominent personality was Imelda Marcos who, in 1965, expressed her desire to build a national theater at a rally for her husband. Marcos soon won the Presidency and the journey towards the theater’s fruition began. Imelda, as First Lady, persuaded the Philippine-American Cultural Foundation to relocate and expand their plans. Soon after, an Executive Order established the Cultural Center of the Philippines, which was equally plagued with problems parallel to its Dumaguete counterpart. The project, hugely criticized, forged on, and the CCP was finally inaugurated months after Silliman received news of the Henry Luce Foundation’s pledge to help build Silliman’s Cultural Center in 1969.
Both the CCP and the Luce Auditorium remain as testaments to an era where tenacious patronage of culture and the arts bore tangible results that remain deeply felt still.
* * *
The idea of the Cultural Center in Silliman took root when President Calderon, in his 1961 Founders Day Inaugural Address, spelled out his vision to build a greater Silliman. This soon became known as the “Building a Greater Silliman,” or BAGS, campaign, which included the construction of buildings and the procurement of equipment.
Dr. Calderon threw his full weight behind the idea. He had a vision, and this was reflected in his program of development and growth for the University. His presidential advocacy was to inform people that “higher education is everybody’s business and that they are entitled to know everything about it.” This, naturally, included the enrichment of cultural life.
In the next few years after his assumption of office, the Luce Auditorium remained a pipe dream. It was, however, the persistent dream of a man who passionately believed that the buildings he envisioned would one day materialize and give full meaning to “quality education.” He gave priority to soliciting funds for the capital development program of the University. This included the counterpart fund of P400,000 for the Cultural Center, of which the Auditorium was a part. Silliman University looked into ways to improve its financial base to fund these projects. The University discovered and tested the strength of its alumni, putting to practice the principle that generosity should begin at home.
And begin it did.
Up until 12 June 1971, when President Calderon stepped down, even alumni like Gilopez Kabayao, violin virtuoso and Sillimanian of international fame, had pledged support for the envisioned cultural center/auditorium.
* * *
President Calderon recommended that a caretaker president be appointed for Silliman when he stepped down from the presidency. This president ad interim came in the person of Dr. Proceso U. Udarbe, whose term officially started on 1 June 1971.
Acting President Udarbe was kept busy inaugurating and implementing the unfinished projects Dr. Calderon left behind. He raced to see the projects push through quickly in view of the inflationary trend of the times.
One of his very first worries in 1971 was the delay in the construction of the Cultural Center. The funds had been promised back in 1968 by the Henry Luce Foundation of New York but the Cultural Center Planning Committee, composed mainly of the units which had their own interests in the Cultural Center, could not easily agree on space allocations, design and location of the Center, much less on the architect. The School of Music and Fine Arts, the Speech and Theatre Arts Department, the English Department, and the Audio-Visual Department comprised the Committee, together with the Campus Planning Committee, chaired by Dean Cesar M. Gangoso of the College of Engineering. This mix made for long meetings and stalemates.
With financial exigencies weighing heavily against time, Dr. Udarbe decided to come to the helm and reorganize the Cultural Center Planning Committee. He became its chairman and steered it into agreement and action. The tipping point of this phase in the history of the Auditorium was the Committee’s decision to commission a young and up-and-coming architect from Negros Occidental. There was finally a consensus, and Augusto Ang Barcelona was chosen to design the Cultural Center. Amiel Leonardia, who would serve as the Luce’s first director, was the technical consultant.
By 28 August 1972, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Auditorium was held.
* * *
It would seem that things would be well underway after ground on the site was broken. But the country suddenly faced Martial Law, and the critical times plagued the University. The time had come to install a more permanent university president. A familiar name was once again broached.
Dr. Quintin Salas Doromal started off reluctantly, having been offered the presidency thrice before when he finally accepted the position and moved to Dumaguete. On 22 January 1973, he wrote to the Board of Trustees, finally accepting the challenge to serve Silliman during a period that would prove to be crucial years.
The University was still reeling from the clampdown imposed by the government and morale in the University was at an all-time low as students and faculty lived in uncertainty. When the president-elect and his wife Pearl were introduced, Sillimanians eagerly welcomed the new captain, trusting a skillful sailor to navigate them through the rough seas of those years.
The new president, fastidious in his ways, believed that money spent on proper appearances was money well-spent. He considered this an investment; the building projects he inherited from Dr. Caldero and Dr. Udarbe soon caught his attention and were soon prioritized, with President Doromal borrowing money for their completion even in the midst of inflation.
Particularly challenging was the Luce Auditorium. Construction started slowly. The project was less than halfway done when it had already overshot it original budget of P1.9 million for the entire Cultural Center. It was a financial headache that had cost a total of P4.75 million in the end. It took a “financial wizard, a die-hard optimist, and a hard-headed administrator to produce such an amount on such short notice,” said one commentator at the time. Luckily, Silliman had all three in Dr. Doromal. He made it happen. He was not going to let the folks at the Henry Luce Foundation regret their pledge to erect an auditorium in Silliman.
* * *
The Henry Luce Foundation was no stranger to the University. In 1953, the Foundation had given Silliman P50,000 for the University’s extension service projects, followed by a grant of a few thousand pesos for books on English and American literature. After a long deliberation on who could most prospectively be the source of funding for the proposed Cultural Center, it became clear that the most likely benefactor would be the Foundation.
Henry R. Luce II, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time Magazine, established the Foundation in 1936 to honor his parents who were missionary educators in China. He pursued to build upon the vision and values of four generations of the Luce family. By 1968, the foundation was headed by Henry Luce III, publisher of Fortune magazine and elder son of the late Henry R. Luce II.
About this time, it also happened that Mrs. Maurice T. Moore, sister of Henry R. Luce II, was also then president of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, which had been supporting Silliman since 1957. In 1965, Mrs. Moore, with her family and Dr. William P. Fenn, then General Secretary of the United Board, came to Silliman for a three-day visit to look into the programs and development plans of the University. This soon led to the Foundation’s deep involvement with Silliman and its future plans.
Three years later, on board the presidential plane graciously lent by then President Marcos, Henry Luce III, his wife Claire Isabel McGill Luce, and their teenaged daughter Lila, came all the way from New York to visit Silliman University for the first time. The Luces were regaled with an elaborate program of music and dance numbers by the School of Music and Fine Arts. The following morning, President Calderon wasted no time in presenting the Cultural Center plan to them. Henry Luce III, during this 24-hour visit, had asked what project they could support, and he got his answer. This was in September 1968.
By March 1969, the University was informed that the Foundation would match every peso raised by the University for the Cultural Center by three pesos, up to P1.2 million. This was news but it was almost expected as it was already earlier intimated by the Luces to Mrs. Miriam Palmore, then Director of the School of Music and Fine Arts, that their performance during the September visit had clinched the deal. The United Presbyterian Church in the United States also gave an outright gift of P300,000 for the same project, which fueled hopes that the Cultural Center would rise by 1970, only a year after the CCP in Manila, at an estimated cost of two million pesos.
* * *
In the beginning, the would-be auditorium was merely part of the campus plan prepared by Cesar Concio, the architect hired by the University in 1949. Several years later, a Cultural Center Planning Committee was formed under the leadership of Dr. Edith L. Tiempo, which had a plan that included five buildings located on the athletic field. However, all these plans simmered in the back burner until 1962, when it became a major item in the “Build a Greater Silliman” campaign of President Calderon.
It immediately hit a snag as the million-peso fund drive for capital development was not enough to include the Cultural Center. A separate campaign had to be mounted if the Cultural Center was to materialize. However, this meant a second round of giving from the Silliman family as support had already been enlisted for the capital development program. After the official announcement of the Foundation in March 1969 to match Silliman’s one peso with three, the Cultural Center Fund Campaign began. Senator Lorenzo G. Teves was appointed campaign manager, and he put his heart into the task of raising the P400,000 counterpart to the Foundation’s P1.2 million. The Foundation set the deadline for 31 December 1970.
“Enrich Your Life—Enjoy the Arts/Help Build Our Cultural Center” was the slogan used for the campaign. Those were, imaginably, frenetic times in the University. Six months into the campaign, the funds stood at a fifth of the target amount. In a show of generosity and love for the University, nearly 500 of the faculty and staff of the University contributed, where a fourth of that number belonged to the various utility and service units. Most had large families and earned the equivalent of about 75 centavos an hour at the time, but each had pledged P5 to P30. The University’s Food Services Department even contributed a whole day’s pay to the fund and a number of them gave a second and even a third time towards the end of the drive. According to authors Edilberto K. Tiempo, Crispin C. Maslog, and T. Valentino Sitoy in their book Silliman University 1901-1976, when a janitor was asked why he was contributing to the fund, he answered, “I want to be a part of it.” That seemed to be the prevailing sentiment of the time.
When the deadline finally came, funds still came up short. The Luce Foundation, however, granted a three-month extension so that Silliman could make up the difference. By 31 March 1971, the fund drive had overshot the goal and Silliman’s Luce Auditorium was finally about to turn into a tangible reality.
To memorialize the rich spirit of solidarity that produced the Auditorium, a sealed list of contributors was embedded in the cornerstone—a testimony of the lengths taken to establish the building, which now stands as a landmark in the campus and, according to Tiempo, Maslog, and Sitoy, has become “symbolic of the University’s concern for culture and education for the whole man.”
* * *
After the long and arduous road taken by the University to match and secure the Luce Foundation’s grant, the coming years after that proved to be even more of a test to its commitment towards the vision of a Cultural Center. Only pure single-mindedness allowed Silliman to triumph over the adversity that threatened its realization, as the auditorium promised to be a considerable challenge to build.
It will help to remember that the Luce Auditorium campaign was one of the last projects of Dr. Calderon as president of the University. In June 1971, he stepped down. His position, and the Luce project, fell into the hands of Dr. Udarbe, and it would still be a little over a year before ground was broken on the project site on August 1972.
The full reality, however, was even bleaker. There they were with the funds secured and the cornerstone laid—yet changes in the plan, and the revelation by the architect that there was a mistake in the original budget estimate, further delayed the construction of the Auditorium. By the time building was set to start on 2 January 1973, Martial Law had already been declared, Silliman University was on the government watch list, and the prices of building materials increased threefold.
Inflation indeed plagued the project. When it was finished, it finally cost P4.75 million instead of the original P1.9 estimate. By the time it was inaugurated, there was no more money to fund the two other buildings comprising the Silliman Cultural Center complex: the Music and Fine Arts buildings only came into being in the later part of the 2011, and the Little Theater still remains a dream.
* * *
On 6 October 1974, a little over six years since the Luces paid their first visit to Silliman, the Auditorium was formally inaugurated with a simple ceremony dedicating the facility to the memory of Claire Isabel McGill Luce, who had died from cancer in 1971.
Henry Luce III came all the way from New York to be the guest speaker at the event. Tiempo, Maslog, and Sitoy quote him saying: “… I can remember no institution or cause which so filled her with immediate admiration as did Silliman….” He went on to talk about how the University set the example not only for continuing projects at Silliman but also for educational support throughout Asia. “And so this building will stand as a symbol of a missionary college, which, in having reached a level of maturity, has kindled the spark of loyalty and the spirit of self-reliance in itself and its alumni….” He ended by saying that, “[w]e are dealing with how to improve the world. And therefore our lives in it.”
That evening, the first performance played out on the new Luce Auditorium stage. Prof. Isabel Dimaya Vista conducted Elijah, the oratorio by Felix Mendelssohn. She was joined by several acclaimed singers from Silliman, namely, the Silliman Young Singers of 1973, the Silliman Singers—which was composed of the Women’s A Cappella Chorus, the Men’s Glee Club, and the Covenant Choir, with Constantino Bernardez, Salvador B. Vista, Sr. Estrellita Orlino, Nelly Aldecoa, Vic Bonnie Melocoton, Violeta Hamot, Betty Chua, and James Palmore as soloists. They were accompanied by Miriam G. Palmore on the organ and Rhodora M. Corton on the piano.
On the Luce Auditorium’s 10th year in 1984, Henry Luce III was invited to attend the anniversary. In a letter addressed to then Director Isabel Dimaya-Vista, he sent his regrets but expressed that he was glad to know that the Auditorium “continues to make possible the presentation of such important and exciting performances” in the area. The celebration was marked by a world premiere performance of a musical called Domo Arigato by Edmund Najera. After six years of near-impossible conquests, the Luce Auditorium gracefully aged into a decade of service to the university and the community.
Rightly put by Dr. Albert Faurot in a letter dated 12 October 1974, a transcribed and reproduced copy of which is with Mr. Juan, the opening of the Luce Auditorium made him ruminate about “hopes fulfilled and hopes deferred,” alluding to the six years it took to finally get the building to stand. He continues to warmly regard the Luce Auditorium as the “frozen school song” with crushed corals and shells texturing its brute concrete finish. Looking like the hull of a big barge, the design combines simplicity with comfort and function.
At the time, the Luce Auditorium was one of the most modern buildings in the Philippines and the first fully air-conditioned auditorium in Negros Oriental. Almost 40 years later, it is known as the most sophisticated infrastructure for the performing arts outside of Manila.
The Luce Auditorium lobby immediately greets one upon approach. In the afternoons, when the doors are closed and there are no performances slated, the lobby is abuzz with students huddled in groups. The energy from practices and meetings taking place creates an almost festive air palpable to the observer. The same energy is amplified during matinees and gala nights where guests huddle in anticipation of the show to come.
“Interpersonal relationships happen in the lobby,” says Prof. Joseph B. Basa, Director of the Luce Auditorium as of this writing. “While waiting, you meet people. Especially after so many years, you come back to Silliman and you meet your friends again. This is where they congregate.”
From the lobby, you enter the foyer when the doors open. The Luce Auditorium Corps of Ushers and Usherettes, or the LACUU, stations some of their ranks to warmly welcome the guests in. In 2011, Silliman saw the foyer modified and air-conditioned to adapt to the times and provide comfort to the Luce Auditorium’s loyal patrons.
Stairs flanking the foyer lead up to the auditorium doors which open into 761 seats, from the original 923 in 1974. The aura shifts once inside. The hard shell reveals a warm core; yellow lights bathe the patrons as the stage sits, waiting to come to life.
The yellow curtain, albeit no longer the original, continues to be the performer’s tool. It gives cover, builds anticipation, frames a scene, and adds flourish when flown or drawn to signal the start or end of a performance. It is winged by the Philippine flag to its right and the Silliman flag to its left.
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Entering the Luce from the east will lead to the ballet studio, home to the Kahayag Dance Company and the Silliman children’s ballet. The ballet studio, despite its location at a wing, is actually quite central to the building as it opens to many corridors. The most interesting, and perhaps most forgotten area, is the nook where a few steps of stairs go down into a small door that opens into the underbelly of the Luce Auditorium.
A lone yellow light illuminates the dim basement upon entry, dusty and thick with the smell of years. Forgotten props and scenery, in some cases stacked up to meet the low ceiling, adorn the floor. Further in though is a most curious space. The area looks as if it was designed for some other purpose than storage, and it was. At the edge of the room, directly behind the apron and under the extended proscenium of the stage is the orchestra pit. According to Toto Roble, who has worked with the Luce Auditorium since 1984, the orchestra pit was only used once. It was during the first year he was there, when the 10th anniversary was commemorated with the showing of Domo Arigato. Since then, it has remained unused due to logistical difficulties, as using it would entail having to remove the flooring of the stage above and prepare the pit so that it would be comfortable enough to keep an orchestra going through the duration of a performance. Prof. Basa said that when an orchestra is in attendance, they occupy the seats in the front rows instead, or are accommodated in the reverberation rooms found at the both sides of the stage, on the second floor.
The ballet studio also leads to the roof. From the ground, one will notice three flights of stairs. On the second floor are the dressing rooms, and the third houses ninety tonnes of air-conditioning, up from the original 85 tonnes the Luce Auditorium started with. The best part of the ascent, however, is the roof. “Beautiful view!” Prof. Basa exclaims. He says Dr. Ben Malayang III, President of the University as of this writing, has been toying with the idea of developing the roof as a reception area. And why not? With the amazing view of the acacia treetops, only the performances can promise to be more exhilarating.
On the west side of the building are the stage restrooms, the Luce Director’s office, the loading area where props pass from outside, and the piano room that houses two grand pianos. One is inside while another one is parked outside the room nearer to the stage. The stage lights are neatly lined up at the inner wings of the stage. Prof. Basa says they try to increase the capacity of lighting every year. In fact, very few of the original tube lights remain as they have since converted to the use of lights made of newer materials like LED.
Before one gets to the stage from the east-side performers’ entrance, one finds the Green Room. Located near the ballet studio, the Green Room is a dressing room cum lounge cum holding area used when there are only a few people in a performing group, as bigger groups are better held in the dressing rooms upstairs. Many performers over the years—many of them the brightest stars of international culture—have graced the Green Room. Now if only these walls could talk, glimpses into the most intimate processes of the artistic psyche would be revealed.
Once one steps out of the Green Room, one finds a door to the left that opens to the stage area. One has to adjust to the relative darkness of the area but there is no mistaking the ropes and weights that dominate the walls, stage right. This is the counterweight system of the Luce Auditorium stage that powers movement. The counterweight system used for the curtain—its legs, the cyclorama, scenery, and other fly equipment—has survived the renovations that took place during the first decade of the 21st century. Prof. Basa quipped that they tried “to go mechanical,” with chains, cables, and a machine instead of rope, but they eventually went back to the basics. The machine proved too noisy and did not work well as it threatened to jam and risk having something stop, suspended mid-flight. After the attempt, it was back to ropes, battens, and reliable manpower, with the realization that though some things profit by the advancement of technology, it is still only people that can really bring a stage to life. Besides, it is easier to give a person the cue to pull and manipulate flight.
Many other layers lie behind the curtain. The cyclorama, for one, is a backdrop in white canvass framed by pipes located at the end-most part of the stage. There are cyclorama lights in four colors, which are used to play with visual effects onstage. There are other movable backdrops smaller than the cyclorama that lie between it and the curtain. These are used for more intimate performances where the stage is made to appear smaller and it is framed by a low curtain, the curtain’s legs, and a closer backdrop.
The view from the stage reveals catwalks above the first few rows of seats where lights are fixed and props may be dropped. Triangles dominate the ceiling, specifically designed by architect Barcelona, for enhanced acoustics. So, too, the walls, odd in their “unfinished” finish. Wires buffer both ceiling and walls to achieve this very purpose.
Straight ahead, at the opposite end of the stage, is the Control Room, which operates sounds, lights, and the projector. The Room has since upgraded its equipment, transitioning with the times from analog to digital. The old Rank Strand controls have been kept for posterity.
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Silliman has always teemed with cultural fare. Tiempo, et al. write that back when the Luce Auditorium first opened its doors, there was a concert, play, or some cultural activity going on every week. The cultural program at the University had been inspired to greater heights and attendance at these offerings had continued to increase “indicating a greater appreciation for the performing arts on campus.”
Since the 1970s, the Luce stage has presented both popular and classical performers and performances. From the foremost American woman pianist Susan Starr; Taipei Children’s Choir; French concert pianist Nicole Delannoy; German violinist Denes Zsigmondy and his wife, pianist Anneliese Nissen; American soprano Julia Finch; German harpsichordist Wilhelm Krumbach; Swiss pianist Nicole Wickihalder; English virtuoso pianist Richard Deering; American violinist Stanley Plummer and his concert partner, Carminda de Leon Regala, pianist; 13-year old Filipino piano prodigy, Cecile Buencamino Licad; leading Filipino baritones Constantino Bernardez, Elmo Makil, and Emmanuel Gregorio; Mrs. Rhoda Isidro Pepito; the Cultural Center of the Philippines Dance Troupe under Alice Reyes; the University of the Philippines Cherubims and Seraphims; to popular singers like Pilita Corrales and Victor Wood.
The Luce Auditorium also had its resident groups which has kept the stage alive. There was the Luce Choral Society instructed by Prof. Dimaya-Vista; the Silliman Dance Troupe under Mrs. Jumawan; and the Portal Players, the resident drama group of Luce Auditorium, founded by Prof. Frank Flores, and then later directed by Mr. Leonardia.
Through the decades, nationally and internationally renowned performers have made their way to Dumaguete to grace the Luce Auditorium stage. Almost forty years later, there are no signs of slowing down. The 21st century has seen cultural seasons that have had national companies and cultural organizations as Ballet Philippines, Philippine Educational Theater Association, the Manila Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Manila, Dulaang U.P., the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philippine Madrigal Singers, Repertory Philippines, Tanghalang Pilipino, the Bayanihan National Dance Company, the Ramon Obusan National Dance Company, the New Voice Company, Philippine Opera Company, Little Boy Productions, British Council, Japan Foundation, and others enrich the Silliman and Dumaguete community.
It is said that the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Perhaps this is the incentive for culture that has fueled people to keep besting themselves, producing feats in the service to history.
In 2014, the Luce Auditorium will celebrate 40 glorious years of showcasing passion, talent, and beauty through culture and the arts. As the anniversary approaches, a time of remembering and thanksgiving begins.
The building of the Luce Auditorium started long before ground broke on the project in 1972. All it would have taken was for one link to collapse and the project could have ended archived or, worse, an unfinished monument to the failure of a cause. It was not to be so as the convergence of people, strong in their capacities and steadfast in their path, did not permit any other alternative. It was going to succeed.
So it did.
The hardships endured by those who had a common vision for the University is forever memorialized and recompensed by the structure that had risen from their work. Culture has given birth to culture as, through the years, the characters have changed but the dogged vision remains the same within each new patron and benefactor of the Luce Auditorium.
Michael Gilligan, President of the Henry Luce Foundation and Chairman of the United Board as of this writing, had once said during a visit to the university and after watching a performance at the Luce: “Silliman is blessed to have so many talented students and faculty members, generous in bringing their gifts to the stage! As I watched the program, I thought how pleased and proud Mr. and Mrs. Luce would be, knowing that their dream has been richly fulfilled. They recognized the vision of Silliman University, especially the strong leadership of the Cultural Affairs Committee. And through the years since our grant, the Luce Foundation has been deeply grateful for the sacrifices and commitments the Silliman community has made to complete construction and maintain the quality of this landmark facility.”
IN PHOTOS BELOW: From the top, clockwise: [1] University President Cicero Calderon welcomes Henry Luce III and wife Claire Isabel McGill Luce to Dumaguete in 1968. The visit would prove fateful. The Henry Luce Foundation promised to match the funds raised by the Silliman community for the construction of a cultural center. [2] The groundbreaking for the Cultural Center on 28 August 1972. [3] The Cultural Center rises from the lot once occupied by the residence of Henry W. Mack. [4] The Luce now nearing completion in 1974. [5] The Luce, two years later, serving Silliman University and the Dumaguete community with its regular fare of cultural performances. [6] The Luce undergoes renovations and refurbishing in 2006, with additional funding from the Henry Luce Foundation.
Labels: architecture, art and culture, dumaguete, luce, silliman
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