#TheaterPH: Ginugunita Kita & KammerChor Manila highlights Manining Awards 2015 this coming September 3

Jesse Lucas set to music a poem by Maningning Miclat titled  “Ginugunita Kita”  and was welcomed by viewers when first aired on TV and was passed online by hundreds of netizens last May. 

Critics, music lovers and avid fans watched it, and seven other Lucas songs of Maningning poems, at the Aldaba Recital Hall of the UP Diliman Theater on the fifth and last Saturday of the same month. Said songs, and more, will be featured at the Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino of the Cultural Center of the Philippines on September 3, back to back with the 2015 Maningning  Miclat Trilingual Poetry Awards featuring Kammerchor Manila. It is aptly entitled “Ginugunita Kita."

Lucas is a multi-awarded composer for film, television, theater and dance. Miclat was a trilingual poet, award-winning visual artist and art teacher. Directed by film and theater actor Roeder Camaňag, the performance will feature soloist Banaue Miclat-Janssen and master cellist Renato Lucas, together with singer Al Gatmaitan and artist Delphine Buencamino.  

MICLAT//LUCAS TANDEM

Maningning Miclat was a poet, fictionist and essayist in English, Filipino and Chinese as well as a painter in Western and Chinese genre. A Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate in UP Diliman, she was a fellow of the U.P. National Writer's Workshop,  Silliman Writer's Workshop and Rio Alma Poetry Clinic. Her Chinese poems made her one of the top-rated women poets in Beijing.

With Ryan Cayabyab and Chino Toledo as mentors, Jesse Lucas won awards from FAMAS which catapulted him to the Hall of Fame, and from the Gawad Urian, Young Critics Circle, Gawad Tanglaw and Aliw. In 2005, he won an award from the Screamfest International Film Festival in Los Angeles, USA. CCP’s Tanghalang Pilipino, Dulaang UP, Dramatis Personae, Gantimpala Theater Foundation, Ballet Philippines and the Philippine Ballet Theater have adapted his music. 

Lucas was deeply inspired by Maningning’s book of poetry, Voice from the Underworld (Anvil Publishing House, 2000,  2002, 2015). He says, "I immediately connected with the words and verses. The words used form their own cadence. Each word seemed carefully selected to form a given rhythm that supports its theme.” He further says, “The poems of Maningning Miclat are almost melodious that I can hear the music through the poetic images. They spoke and at the same time sang to me poignant thoughts about life, pain and love. These are the foundation of Ginugunita Kita’s music.”  

He adds, “The experience in writing the music was really meditative and cathartic at the same time. It feels like I have discovered a new language, a language that speaks directly to the soul."

MICLAT/MICLAT, LUCAS/LUCAS COLLABORATION

Lucas set to music Maningning’s poems such as Ginugunita Kita, Tawag, Duet (nina Rizal at Bracken), Kulay sa Bagyo, Ang Naliligaw, A Stare, Verses # 2,  To Catch a Second and Turn it to Forever, Panibugho and Shi Bu Shi (in Chinese, translated “Isn’t It?). They will be sang by Banaue Miclat-Janssen with Renato Lucas on the cello and Jesse Lucas on the piano. 

Miclat-Janssen sings the opera, acts and dances on stage and hones young artists as  professor of theatre arts at UP Diliman. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts from the City University of New York and her Bachelor of Arts from UP Diliman. In New York, she attended voice lessons from Evelyn Mandac, Robert Carpenter, and CUNY's Judylee Vivier. She had a stint at the Metropolitan Opera in such productions of Salome, Faust, La Boheme, Don Carlo, I Puritani and La Traviata. She has performed at the CCP, UP Abelardo Hall, UP Theater and Ateneo de Manila University. 

Renato Lucas is one of the finest cellists in the country. His schools included UP Diliman College of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music (USA), Royal Northern College of Music (England), Hochschule fur Musik Detmold (Germany), and Universitaet der Kunst Berlin (Germany). He has been the principal soloist of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra for three decades. He has performed as soloist with the Manila Symphony Orchestra, Manila Chamber Orchestra, and UST Symphony Orchestra, as well as the CCP's Filipino Artist Series, Pundaquit Arts Festival, Las Piňas Bamboo Organ Festival, and the Maningning Poetry Awards.

Kammerchor Manila and the Maningning Awards

 

Kammerchor Manila (KM) stormed the Czech Republic by  becoming the  Absolute and Grand Prix winner in the 42nd Festival of Songs Olomouch last year.

It garnered four gold medals in such categories as superior mixed adult choir  (earning 98 pts), mixed adult choir (100 pts), folklore a capella (100 pts), and the spiritual, gospel and pop category (100 pts). Its three perfect scores bested such finalists as Mesani Pevski Zbor Pomlad  of Slovenia, Vocalisti Rostochienses  of Germany, Temasek Junior College  of Singapore and Mesani Pevski Zbor Svoboda of  Slovenia. A nation’s pride indeed for a church-based choir in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary Parish in West Triangle, Quezon City. KM will herald the winners of the 2015 Maningning Miclat Trilingual Poetry Awards.

MMAFI

The Maningning Miclat Art Foundation, Inc. (MMAFI) was organized in 2001 to encourage creativity and to recognize, award, and nurture outstanding and talented young poets and artists 28 years old and below. Maningning Miclat passed on at age 28.

Its poetry competitions in Filipino, English and Chinese which started in 2003 are held during odd-numbered years and the painting contests in even-numbered years. The grand winners receive P28,000.00, a Julie Lluch trophy and books such as Voice from the Underworld by Maningning; Beyond the Great Wall: A Family Journal by Mario, Alma, Maningning & Banaue Miclat,which won the National Book Award for biography in 2007; Secrets of the Eighteen Mansions by Mario Miclat which made it to the list of the Man Asian Literary Prize; and Fairground: A Literary Feast.

The prizes reflect the Foundation's commitment to young talents. Founding MMAFI board member, Edna Manlapaz, likens them to young plants which "shoot up from the ground to reach for the sun and drink in the rain (and) grow into strong saplings. In time they stand tall on the hills, trees that mark our horizon." 

Ginugunita Kita is presented by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, MMAFI, the Talent Factory, Inc and the Artists’ Playground. 

For inquiries, please contact, 0917-8478489; 0936-7097154. Tickets are available at the CCP Marketing Department (832-1125 loc. 1806), the CCP Box Office (832-3704) or Ticketworld at National Bookstore (891-9999). 

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