(Ninth of a series) Singer Lorna Cifra’s surname may have sealed her fate, but as any musician that’s ever had to make their own way in the gnarly terrain of music-making quickly finds out, a sound musical career is built on good and bad choices, a smidge of luck, and diligence of the sort that...
Tag: jazz
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Portraits in Jazz: At play with Lynn Sherman
(Eighth of a series) “…Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply…” To those lines of Huxley’s poetry from his novel Island, one readily conjures up the image of Lynn Sherman—singer, actor, animal rights activist, and, in her words, “frustrated model”—seamlessly gliding into any of those incarnations. She always...
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Portraits in Jazz: Everybody loves Rey Vinoya
(Seventh of a series) When this series started in March, drummer Rey Vinoya put himself at a distance from deadline in a mix of hesitation and bemusement. Without declining outright to be profiled, he proposed what he believed was the farthest possible date from March: “September!” he said, beaming, when I asked him in April...
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Portraits in Jazz: Tago is Nelson Gonzales’ happy madness
Little surprise that the confluence of Ghost Month and Mercury retrograde dredges up the unlikeliest memories. It was typhoon season in 2012 when we found ourselves at the newly opened Tago waiting for the downpour to subside after an ill-timed meetup with a handful of friends ran well into the night. Two things stood out...
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American jazz legend Count Basie lives on in Italian city
Seven years ago, I embarked on a different course in my career as a jazz guitarist. From “land-based” gigs at Tago Jazz Café, Manila Peninsula, and the Philippine International Jazz & Arts Festival, I began playing aboard cruise liners. My first seaborne experience was in 2017, on the ship Seabourn of Holland America Line. Among...
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Portraits in Jazz: Quiet nights with Jeannie and Henry
(Fifth in a series) Fresh off the heady excitement of the Philippine International Jazz Festival (PI Jazzfest), which was revived in May after a six-year pause, and in which partners Jeannie Tiongco and Henry Katindig shared the stage with PI Jazz All Stars headliners and foreign jazz artists, the couple have returned to the dim...
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Portraits in Jazz: Alvin Cornista’s different worlds
(Third of a series) Most everything can be turned into a story if one knows how. Or a song, if we ask tenor saxophonist Alvin Cornista, whose soon-to-be-released part 1 (simply called Manila) of a double album (part 2, titled 7,000 Islands, drops next year) that contains 15 tunes written over a 2-week stretch in...
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Portraits in Jazz: Ronald Tomas, homeland and music
Second of a series “I just want to play,” says Ronald Tomas, band leader, arranger, composer, singer, and saxophonist—arguably one of the busiest musicians today who cross over jazz, R&B/ funk/rock/soul, and pop jazz stages with enviable ease, the sort for whom music is air and water. Ronald grew up in Pangasinan swaddled by music:...
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Portraits in Jazz: Tots Tolentino in the cool of the moment
(First of a series) EDITOR’S NOTE: With this piece, Jocelyn de Jesus starts a series of portraits resulting from conversations with stellar Filipino jazz practitioners—“in full bloom in their 60s and 70s,” she says, and “changing the game one gig at a time.” Mario “Tots” Tolentino’s household-name status in contemporary Philippine music is undisputed, having...
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All that Jazz: The music lives here
Second of two parts Perhaps the most resolute of the bar owners is Nelson Gonzales, drummer and owner of Tago Jazz on Main Avenue in Cubao, Quezon City, which is turning out to be jazz’s permanent home address. Open from Friday to Sunday for evening shows, Tago is the stage to be for jazz musicians...