PIANIST Ingrid Sala Santamaria is wrapping up her musical career with yet another book chronicling her “Romantic Piano Concerto Journey” (RPCJ) with pianist Reynaldo Reyes from January 2001 to August 2015.
It is a book that complements her “Four Seasons” released the other year.
For the record, the “RPCJ” started in the family’s ancestral house along Gorordo Avenue in Cebu City in 2001. That’s the same house where she started her first music lessons from her mother, Pilar Blanco Sala. It was the same house where her mother’s Battig School started and where music-inclined Cebuanos took their first formal music lessons.
“RPCJ” came at a phase in her life when she yearned for more time for music-making after she devoted a decade of her life putting up the foundation for the Cebu Youth Symphony Orchestra (CYSO) through the Salvador and Pilar Sala Foundation.
The 10 years spent recruiting and training teachers to be part of an orchestral ensemble was a challenge to her teaching and organizational capabilities.
But it drained the musician in her.
So after the CYSO evolved into the Peace Philharmonic Philippines, she decided to heed the yearnings of the performing artist in her.
For the Luzon and Manila concerts, Santamaria requested the Yupangcos of the Yamaha Piano Showroom for venue sponsorship: “I wanted a venue that was ‘neutral’ and that would symbolically announce that our concerts were going to be for everybody, everywhere.”
From Cebu and Manila in 2001, “RPCJ” moved on to Linmarr Apartelle Ballroom in Davao City, St. Paul University in Tuguegarao City, Hotel Roman Villa Ballroom in Isabela and the provincial capitol lobby in Catanduanes.
The year 2002 also saw the “RPCJ” performing in Tacloban City, Ormoc City, Iligan City, Cagayan de Oro, Tagbilaran, Silay City and San Jose de Buenavista in Antique province.
The same year also saw “RPCJ” performing in Dasmariñas Cavite, Tiaong, Quezon, Ifugao province, Batac, Ilocos Norte, La Union and Dagupan City, among others.
RCPJ ended last year and it was good a time as any for Santamaria to chronicle that other phase of her musical endeavors.
Those 14 years saw her sharing classical music with the masses from Aparri to Davao and from Catanduanes to Antique.
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