MEDIUM RARE
Somewhere I read a Japanese monk’s observation that as we are all travelers we must learn that separation awaits us at the end of the road.
Separation comes in many forms but it is inevitable. Some separations do us good, other times a separation breaks our hearts and turns our lives upside-down.
For Jenn Agrazada Schreiner, coming home to the Philippines from Germany for the first time in many years since she got married to a German was a bitter-sweet experience. It was the last time she would see and hug her mother, the first time she had to take care of such worldly matters as chasing a paper trail of documents to prove her identity, look for a buyer for the now empty house, and ask her Manila-based friends to help her find a team to renovate it for the next occupant.
For Evelyn Quiroz, from being a former president of the Malacañang press corps to taking over as president of Plaridel, the association of “senior” journalists, the transition was quick and painless – no election, no objections to Chairman Emeritus Roly Estabillo simply and formally relinquishing his presidency to EQ, as Evelyn is called. EQ took over with neither a whisper nor a battlecry. Plaridel members are holding their breath: When will EQ call her first general meeting?
If music shakes away the dust of everyday living, Mariel Ilusorio, aka Mrs. Abel Galang, must have gathered a fairly huge collection of feather dusters by now. Whether as a soloist or accompanist to vocalists such as Rachel Gerodias and Biyong Park, Mariel is also quite the pedagogue. Before any performance, she situates her audience in the time and place of the composer she is about to interpret on the pianoforte.
At her latest recital at Sunshine Place recently, Mariel announced she was now her own producer, as a result of which there were 10 ambassadors in the audience; in short, it was an international event!
If music is memories, I remember how as a kid enrolled in the Music Academy of Immaculate Conception Academy (ICA), Sister Margaret Mary, M.I.C. forced her students to join a contest for kids on a radio station. And we won! It was the last time I considered myself a pianist.
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