It was once suggested to Cecile Licad and German cellist Alban Gerhardt that they should perform in Philippine prisons. The two artists liked the idea and said they were open to playing music in unlikely places.

Last year, Gerhardt played in several train stations in Frankfurt, München, Augsburg, Nürnberg, Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin.

Gerhardt told blogger Stella Lorenz: “I’m trying to take the concert experience out of the concert hall and to the people who normally couldn’t afford a concert ticket. Besides, there’s something about the atmosphere at a train station that makes Bach’s music stand out even more. Due to the surrounding noise, the audience really needs to focus on the sound, and that itself creates an intense involvement.”

Lorenz reported on the peformances: “Besides that quality of sound and the extraordinary context, it is Gerhardt’s lack of pretentiousness that makes his performance so outstanding.

Always focused but never too intense, he wraps up his listeners in the magic of Bach’s music, and then, even after an hour of playing in the 10-degree temperature of the station, stays to chat with his audience. ‘It’s not as exhausting as I’ve feared and the reactions of the people are really rewarding,’ he tells me. ‘It’s great to see how people respond to Bach’s music.’”

Social experiment

Some years back, an American violinist played six Bach pieces in a Washington, D.C., train station during rush hour on a cold January morning.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only six people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. What they didn’t know was the performer was Joshua Bell, who two days earlier had played in a sold-out theater in Boston with seats costing at least $100.

As it turned out, Bell’s performance  playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people.

The outlines were: In a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

In 2006, a full grand piano traveled from Manila to Paoay where Licad played in Paoay Church to an appreciative Ilocano audience.

In Currimao town, Licad played Mozart in a beach resort named Sitio Remedios. In the middle of the piece, piano tuner Danny Lumibao dived underneath the piano to reinstall the pedal which gave way in the middle of a performance.

Musical Tondo

Last week, I witnessed an unlikely concert in the heart of Tondo, the birthplace of the country’s foremost revolutionary, Andres Bonifacio, National Artist for Theater Rolando Tinio, King of Comedy Dolphy, writer Bienvenido Santos.

I recall that in the well-made gangster movie “Boy Golden”  directed by Chito Roño,  one of the most chilling scenes was a piano recital in an old mansion with the local godfathers planning an execution in the middle of a Beethoven sonata.

We recall the musical Tondo when pianist Ingrid Sala Santamaria, with the MSO Chamber Orchestra, played Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in a special Independence Day concert in an ancestral house in the heart of Tondo.

But with the owner’s request for privacy, we cannot reveal the owner’s name and exact address except that it is just five-minute tricycle ride away from the LRT Tayuman Station.

The house was built in 1932, a year after the Manila Metropolitan Theater opened. The son of the lawyer who owned the house used to play the clarinet in a San Beda jazz band.

Santamaria’s chance meeting with the lawyer’s son during a concert led to this special concert, where the National Historical Commission  led by Carminda Arevalo unveiled a marker naming the third floor of the ancestral house the Ingrid Sala Santamaria Concert Salon.

Intimate rapport

With Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto opening the program, with an eight-member ensemble providing the orchestra part, one savored a unique concert in the heart of Tondo.

Indeed, there was intimate rapport in the rendition of the Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky concertos (only first movement for the latter). One wished there would be more of this kind of music-making on this part of Tondo.

As the Andres Cristobal Cruz book “Ang Tondo Ay May Langit Din”) once proclaimed, there is also a slice of heaven in Tondo waiting to be explored.

Pianist Santamaria and the MSO ensemble provided that heavenly component on that day the country was observing its 116th Independence Day.