Yes, he with the drop-dead Koreanovela killer looks who can whip up a mean violin performance like his father, Gilopez Kabayao, and his sisters, Sicilienne and Farida—yes, indeed, 24-year-old Gilberto, the pet (because the only) son of pianist Corazon Pineda-Kabayao, is joining the US Air Force this November.
“I was in the States, working for a violin company in downtown LA, staying with Ilonggo friends, and then there was this US Air Force recruiter. We talked. I filled up the forms and took the exam, and three months later they said I made it,” Gil said one morning after the Kabayao Family Quintet’s recent standing-ovation performance in Rodelsa Hall at Liceo de Cagayan University in Cagayan de Oro City.
“It’s my childhood dream to be a pilot,” he said. “To travel around the world and have some adventure. Just to enjoy being single.”
It’s not as if Gil was not a citizen of the world. At his young age, he’s been there, done that. As part of the Filipino family that plays on the concert stage together, he has joined the family’s concert tours throughout the Philippine archipelago as well as in Asia, the US and Europe.
“When we performed in Madrid and Paris two years ago,” he said, “it was the most memorable travel I’ve had with my family. Europe is something else. Everywhere you look is pleasing to the eye, is informed by tradition.”
When Gil’s father, named after his grandfather, Don Gil of the Lopez clan in Iloilo society, was presented to the world as the next young violinist of note, it happened in New York, no less: His Carnegie Hall debut at 19 years old was the talk of the town for generations.
“He was the original kilabot ng mga colegiala,” Gil said of his father.
4th generation
Gil and his sisters are the fourth-generation violin players in the family.
The family routine when they were growing up demanded that they wake up at four o’clock in the morning for violin practice.
“That was already a concession,” Liyen (Sicilienne) confided. “Our grandfather woke our dad at 2 a.m. for violin practice.”
The dawn practices happened every day, especially school days. “There is a picture of me playing the violin as I dozed off, while dad was on the piano accompanying me,” Liyen said.
Gil recalled: “Once, I hid my violin in the garbage can so I couldn’t practice.”
But, as Liyen put it, “If we didn’t practice, we could not perform, which meant we couldn’t travel. Besides, we loved the applause. Yeah, it’s been hard work for the last 25 years or so.”
Gil, who would play-act as the “conductor” during family rehearsals, conceded: “What I really wanted to do was play basketball.”
He went to Doane Baptist Academy in Iloilo’s historic Molo district, but spent the last two years of high school doing home-schooling.
“It was a laid-back childhood,” he said. “I’d go out with friends, play basketball. A normal childhood. But we enjoyed playing with our family. If you ask me if music is the foremost thing I want, I’d have to say no. But I will teach my own kids to play the violin.”
Gil, who was in the basketball varsity at College of St. Benilde, where he took up BSBA major in Export Management, is also into swimming, billiards, chess. “I’m a very outgoing guy. I’ll go for adventure any time.”
Liyen said: “Our parents allowed Gil to study in Manila, but for us girls, we had to study in Iloilo. Then after college we could pursue further studies anywhere we wished. But our brother is restless. He just had to go.”
Their sister Farida teaches humanities at University of the Philippines in the Visayas and is into theater work. She has an MA in Literature.
“I’m more of a producer, more of a boss,” Liyen guffawed. “Farida is very determined to be a stage actress. She played the narrator and stepmother in Repertory Philippines’ ‘Cinderella.’”
Back home
At the Rodelsa Hall concert—where the quintet performed one of the pieces Gilopez performed in his Carnegie concert, Scherzo Tarantelle by Henryk Wieniawski, as well as Brahms’ Sonatensatz, Serenade by Schubert, Malotte’s The Lord’s Prayer and other well-loved classics—Gil had just gotten back from the US.
“This was the first time I performed with the family after a year of being abroad,” he said. There was no time for rehearsals, but the notes were still in my fingers. We’ve been playing these pieces for a long time. It’s like riding a bike. You get your bearings just like that.”
And he has a well-kept secret: “Before we perform on the concert stage, I’d go to a corner and listen to my iPod. The music I listen to is Linkin Park.”
Gil and Liyen recalled the rigors of concert tours. “We would do 11 shows in two days, with each show lasting for 1½ hours. We thought we would be so tired, but we weren’t. We enjoyed it.”
There were thrilling hazards, too.
“At the last of the eight concerts we did in a three-day stretch in Chicago, I dropped the bone,” rued Liyen. “Just recently, my E-string snapped while in the middle of a performance at Lyceum. We had an extra violin, but it was at St. Scho, and there was a flood at the time. My dad and I switched violins. He was on three strings, I was on four. There was Farida on four strings, too. We were playing only on 11 strings, but we did it, and the audience loved it.”
They talked about the time they performed at the plaza during a provincial tour. It started to rain while they were performing.
Liyen said: “They put a plywood over the piano, and each of us, including my mother, had an assistant holding an umbrella. It was on with the show. And the crowd stayed on till the end of the concert.”
Their father and mother’s arrangements and recordings of Filipino folk songs have earned them a place in Philippine music history. In fact, Gilopez and Corazon Kabayao are among the select few Filipino musicians featured in the select two-CD volume celebrating the Outreach and Exchange Division of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
A few years ago, the children (Liyen, Farida and Gil) recorded their own rendition of a popular OPM. It won an Aliw Award.
With Gil gone, the Kabayao Family Quintet will just become the Kabayao Family Quartet. The family—the ones left behind—will go on playing beautiful music together.
Mom is busy in the Arts Council of Iloilo,” Liyen said. “We’re also doing a lot of things through the Lopez-Kabayao Foundation. Then there are the farms. And our CDs. And, yes, our church ministry.”
Not to mention, a book on their parents.
And then she let on: “I can’t imagine life in music alone.”
