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| Theresa Calpotura Releases Debut Album Kanta Filipina Theresa Calpotura has released her debut CD project, Kanta Filipina (VGo Recordings). The 12 original, arranged and transcribed works for solo guitar, all created for her by Filipino-American composer Bayani Mendoza de Leon, are the culmination of three years of intense research and collaboration. What began for Ms. Calpotura as a desire to explore the musical side of her ancestry, quickly developed into an effort to uncover and share a fraction of a vast amount of untold Filipino cultural history. Following an enlightening visit to the Philippines, she took the first of many trips to upstate New York to work with Mr. de Leon—a decorated composer, scholar and cultural leader within the Filipino community who also happened to write for the guitar. During their sessions, Ms. Calpotura ultimately discovered a sense of cultural identity that had been missing for her as a Filipina-American of mixed heritage. Kanta Filipina blends a variety of styles from the Philippines, reflecting a musical microcosm in its driving indigenous tribal rhythms, traditional folk dances, chants, lullabies and love songs. Maglalatik (The song of the Coconut Meat Gatherers) from the north shows a kinship to Taiwanese music, and kundiman Paalam Sa Pagkadalaga (Fairwell to Maidenhood) expresses a lyrical Spanish aesthetic. The original works Talagad and Batikusan use southern funeral chant and tribal harvest ritual music respectively. Parang Kahapon Lamang (It Seems Only Yesterday) is an original composition that uses indigenous lullaby forms, and Mutya ng Pasig (Maiden of Pasig River) is a love song turned art song, at the heart of which lies an ancient pre-hispanic form called the kumintang. All of the works convey a uniquely Filipino spirit that Ms. Calpotura hopes to continue to look for and express in her music. Ms. Calpotura has performed in numerous venues throughout the US and the Philippines. She has won a number of awards from associations such as the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts and the American String Teachers Association, and received scholarships from the Oberlin Conservatory and the Yale School of Music. Ms. Calpotura studied with the renown guitar pedagogue Scott Cmiel of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory where she studied with versatile guitarist/composer Stephen Aron. She then continued at the Yale School of Music with creative guitarist/composer Benjamin Verdery. Ms. Calpotura has given masterclasses in the US and in the Philippines and is currently on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Preparatory Division. In addition to her solo work, Ms. Calpotura founded the groundbreaking cello-guitar duo Ethos with cellist Susan Millar. She has studied the lute with Christopher Morrongiello of the Venere Lute Quartet, jazz guitar with Tony Romano, and has participated in several masterclasses with guitarists such as John Williams, Sharon Isbin, Antigoni Goni, David Tanenbaum, Mark Teicholz, David Leisner, Scott Tennant, Nicholas Goluses, Julian Gray, Ronald Pearl, Lily Afshar, Stanley Yates, John Holmquist and Benjamin Verdery. Bayani Mendoza de Leon is one of the most versatile Filipino-American artists. He is a composer, musician, writer, folklorist, ethnomusicologist, cultural scholar and leader. As composer, he has written works that reflect his Philippine-Asian heritage. He was recipient of the 2008 PAMANA presidential award for outstanding Filipinos overseas from the Philippine Government and the 2008 Most Outstanding Filipino-American Achiever in America award from the Filipino Heritage Foundation, Inc. He was the first Filipino-American composer to write a full-scale symphonic poem, Batong-Buhay (Livingstone), for rondalla, a native Philippine string ensemble, woodwinds and string orchestra. He won an international prize in 1976 for his work, Bahay-Bata (Mother's Womb), that combined Philippine indigenous instruments with the Western harp and clarinet. Bayani is also one of the foremost master teachers of the rondalla, a native Philippine string ensemble that is dying away in towns and cities of the Philippines. He developed and directed the Samahan Dance Company and PASACAT Performing Arts Rondallas in San Diego, California, the Paaralang Pilipino Foundation and U.P. Alumni and Friends Rondallas in New Jersey, and the Foundation for Filipino Artists Rondalla in New York. Several of his rondalla arrangements, numbering around 500 and ranging from Philippine folk and composed music to Broadway and standard classics, have already been recorded on CDs. write your comments about the article :: © 2010 Jazz News :: home page |