(Fourteenth of a series)
Most everyone has a fan story. One of my own stories happens to be on keyboardist Joey Quirino (JQ to family and friends), who I hit some time ago on Messenger with a YouTube clip of Rickie Lee Jones live in concert, singing the June Christy standard “Something Cool,” which claimed to have the late great pianist and composer Lyle Mays on keys.
You think we could do this some time? I asked, half-jokingly, thrilled at having stumbled on what was arguably a phenomenal pairing of singer and accompanist. I also knew that Mays was high on JQ’s essential listening list.
Sure! JQ replied, and I could almost hear the quick laugh he readily bursts into when he’s amused.
It hadn’t been five minutes when he returned, saying, “I didn’t think it sounded like a mature Lyle. Then I looked for a copy of the whole concert, and I’m afraid that it’s not Lyle Mays. But a good version nonetheless… [Lyle] had been mistakenly credited for it. [Look for ‘Live in Amsterdam RLK.’] That’s Neil Larsen.”
That’s JQ for you—sharp, no-nonsense, ever on the ball. Which is why it’s always a joy when he’s on keyboards: Besides bringing out the choicest chords, he can, when called for, go on an extended, almost meditative improvisation that hits all the right spots.
JQ’s versatility has put him squarely among today’s busiest musicians, playing with the AMP Big Band in all its iterations (big band, nonet, dektet); he also leads Habemus Papas with drummer Jorge San Jose and bassist Meong Pacana, which had been formed as singer-actress Bituin Escalante’s band. He is also a mainstay of Ronald Tomas’ Dixie Sheikhs and The Virtuals—basically the Papas with guitarist Janno Queyquep and led by saxophonist Lorrie Zamora. Lately he has been doing a trio with Meong and drummer Roy Mercado at Wolfgang’s Newport.
Best of times, worst of times
While JQ remains upbeat about jazz and its apparent resurgence in the local music scene—“More popular now than in the last 20 years,” he notes—it has yet to reach the fever pitch it did in the days of Birdland and Vineyard.
“The best times really were when DZUW was still around,” he says. “This was the jazz alternative to rock then. I first heard Pat Metheny there. They even played Wayne Shorter.”
DZUW was the FM station of DZRJ at the time. Unfortunately, it was short-lived, as it didn’t stand a chance against the “easy listening jazz” played by other so-called jazz stations.
“When we were first starting out as musicians, jazz was alive and well in Manila,” JQ says. Almost overnight in the early to mid-’80s, the live music scene turned unapologetically pop. “Tavern on the Square came along and killed [jazz]. We had to play pop to survive.” Most of the jazz players left for abroad then, he adds.
“It was such an insular-minded market then, which always collectively went for whatever was considered popular,” he continues. Headliners of the live entertainment heap included what would become the biggest names in local entertainment in the ’80s—Music and Magic, Kuh Ledesma, ZsaZsa Padilla, Gary Valenciano, and Juan Miguel Salvador.
But improvisers always improvise: Jazz musicians who stayed put rolled with the punches, lending their precious talent as backup players in live and recording sessions. Others slipped out of the country to play for six-month or yearlong stints on cruise ships and in hotels across Asia. Many also kept the jazz flame alive in smaller venues that popped up as quickly as they shut down, only to return in another shape and form elsewhere.
It pleases JQ to see younger players today who “are more technically proficient and have a better appreciation of tradition.” Nowhere is this more evident perhaps than in the AMP Big Band, a truly multigenerational ensemble if there ever was one. The dynamic interaction among three generations at the very least innovates on conventions even as it passes on knowledge to the next set of jazz music bearers.
A piano for your thoughts
JQ attended De La Salle for grade school and high school, and went on to the University of the Philippines College of Music under slightly unusual circumstances.
“The usual route for a pianist is to start young with piano lessons, which I did at maybe eight or nine,” he says. “When I was a high school sophomore I got to audition at the UP College of Music, thanks to [classical singer and teacher] Aurelio Estanislao, and was placed under Miss Laureola. I already had a foot in the door to college.”
JQ reminds us that nearly all the great jazz pianists have had some form of classical training. “Once you acquire a modicum of technique you then start to train on harder pieces,” he says. “I was always playing jazz and fusion mostly, even when I was training for classical music. So there really wasn’t [much of a] transition for me.”
He says he heard Bitches Brew—the highly influential and groundbreaking double album by jazz great Miles Davis widely considered a pivotal work in the development of jazz fusion—when he was in the sixth grade. “Then and there I formed the thought that this is what music should be,” he says. At the same time, JQ had a peer group of musicians that introduced him to Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and The Mahavishnu Orchestra—all leading lights in jazz.
In a way, too, his being part of a large and eminently musical clan (aunts Lory and Mei-ling, and uncle Jim Paredes are some of its more famous musical members; JQ’s mother is the eldest girl in the Paredes brood) may well have eased him into turning professional.
Still, JQ says that early on he wasn’t even sure that he wanted to make a career out of music. “My sister had received a toy organ for her birthday,” he recalls. “I remember her being so incensed one day because I broke it after I’d kept playing it night and day. So, my folks decided to get a piano.”
Jazz as prayer
Though far from ideal, the jazz scene in Manila today holds a lot of promise, as technology intersects with talent and new venues deliver fresh hope for a 21st-century resurgence.
“Access to and dissemination of information is one way to keep any art alive,” says JQ. “With jazz, I cannot stress enough the importance of live engagement.”
He is quick to admit that his best moments are when he can raise the level of playing through his engagement. But like many creatives in general, he balks at the business side of things, given the unreliability of earnings and the lack of formal structures to ensure the protection of musicians’ rights and welfare.
To supplement income and pass on knowledge, he can teach: “I’ve taught a few people a few things, but I cannot teach from ground up. I can refine or add to your skill. [But] that’s all the teaching I do.”
Interestingly, too, his other pursuits led him to be part of a group under the tutelage of a Taoist master. As a pilgrim he has visited several temples in China, Taiwan, and Tibet. “Though I am no longer connected with the temple, I do Qigong and Tai Chi on a regular basis,” he says.
To my mind, one visual and sound of JQ on the keyboard endures. Between sets—was it in Tago or Balete@Kamias?—he started playing what I shortly recognized as Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Inútil Paisagem,” an intriguing and lyrical piece whose harmony harbors its complexity, one that summons sophisticated chord voicings, modulations, and progressions. I recall he played it through to the end, and when I cheered wildly, alone, when he was done, he looked up, his face lighting up in genuine surprise that there was someone who’d actually listened. He completely owned the song in that quiet moment, making it sound halfway between a prayer and a poem.
So when he tells CoverStory that he hopes to “still be playing jazz and staying as healthy as I can be” in the foreseeable future, we share that hope and wish that it would be.
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