Ingrid Sala Santamaria is celebrating her 50th year as a concert pianist this year. It is a time to look back, but Ingrid being what she is, her focus is very much in the present, with some very clear perspectives about the future.
Her house in Makati, built 47 years ago, and where she and husband Jose Maria “Joe” Santamaria raised their family, has become a repository of myriad memorabilia.
Artist Joey Stevens has helped in the transformation. He agreed with Ingrid that the display be artistically arranged to avoid turning out into an institutional museum, as she puts it. Joey knew what to do, having assisted Ingrid with she opened her all-year-round Christmas Village house in Biñan, Laguna.
As you face the front door at No. 24 San Felipe in Magallanes Village you are greeted by a vintage upright piano you may be tempted to tinkle. “It’s been murdered,” Ingrid says with a laugh. “We’ll see more of it later, inside.”
The first thing you see as you enter the grand salon is a seven-foot Kawai parlor grand piano where Ingrid rehearses regularly. It won’t stay long there, destined as lngrid’s gift to Santa Isabel College where she obtained her Master in Music degree (gold medal).
“That was a memorable concert on Feb. 18, 1962, the start of my career as a concert pianist,” she recalls. I played with the Filipino Youth Symphony Orchestra (FYSO) conducted by maestro Luis Valencia.”
The salon is ever in readiness for a recital any time during this golden year. Forty people can easily be accommodated for an afternoon or evening musicale. One thing’s for sure, children and grandchildren come most if not all weekends.
There are dining tables with precious porcelain figurines depicting 18th-century lords and ladies playing the piano and other musical instruments.
Ingrid leads the way upstairs and points out to what seems a modern metal sculpture. It proves a piano is a string instrument as it is “the interior of the slayed piano you saw at the front porch.” Very surreal, Dali would have loved it!
The tour starts in one of the bedrooms, dedicated to “Heritage.” It is dominated by two big paintings in oil. One is by Cebuano painter Adeste Deguilmo depicting the Sala ancestral mansion in Cebu’s Gorordo Avenue.
There lived her grandparents Juan Sala and Bernabela Escaño Sala, her parents Salvador Sala and Pilar Blanco Sala, and Ingrid with the rest of her siblings—the late Salvador “Buddy” Jr., Chona, Juanito, Jose, Bernabe and Astrid.
The house was so spacious the ground floor was dedicated to the Battig Piano School run by her mother and where Ingrid graduated, giving her premiere piano recital at the age of 10. Cultural events were held in the house which later became the seat of the Sala Foundation.
The other large painting is a life-size wedding portrait of her parents, done in sepia tones, and taken from an old photo by Manila artist Edgar Torres. There are two other wedding portraits, one of her paternal grandparents, and another of Ingrid as a bride of 19 when she married Joe Santamaria in 1959.
One photo shows her great-grandparents Fernando Escaño and Augustina Faelnar Escaño who raised their large brood in the then bustling town of Matilbog, Southern Leyte. Music was an integral part of Casa Escaño. Zarzuelas in Spanish were regularly staged, as well as veladas for which a music band was maintained for the purpose.
Family photos
Ingrid indicates a collage of family photos initiated in 1970 by her husband Joe. “Every year, in October, we posed for photos that served as Christmas greetings,” Ingrid recalls wistfully. “We did that until 1992, when Joe died.”
An entire wall is dedicated to photos of their grandchildren. There we see Crispy and Arsenic Laurel’s Jay, Matt, Carlos, Dan and Mia; Cecile Nubla’s Cristina, Anton, Javy and Bianca; Joey and Cathy Santamaria’s Sam (Ingrid Jr,), Jaime, Sophia and Brian; and Cathy Escaño’s lgnacio, Rocio and Natalia. One photo shows Ingrid with all 16.
An oil portrait of Joe is a remarkable likeness, and around it are pictures of his parents and family. There are quite a number of photo collages, one of them showing Ingrid and Joe during their 30th wedding anniversary, and another of a European sojourn in 1991.
A colorful collage records a lively Santacruzan at the Cebu Plaza Hotel in 2001. Ingrid reigned as the Reina Emperatriz, escorted by son Joey. Daughter Cathy was Reina Elena with son Ignacio Escaño as the Emperador Constantino. Daughter Cecile and daughter-in-law Cathy were also Reinas.
There is also a collage of the day Ingrid asked her mentor Reynaldo Reyes, whom she calls “the best pianist in the world,” to be the first to view the memorabilia expository.
Next is of her latest birthday last February. “It was a Music Day and open house from 7 a.m.-10 p.m.,” she recounts.” I played for my guests, and served food all the way to dinner.” A group of nuns from Santa Isabel came en masse.
Ingrid holds her breath for a moment as her eyes rest on a collage of what seems like a hundred photos of her and Joe. She fondly recalls how supportive he was of her piano performing career. She, in turn, made a happy balance of being wife, mother and performing artist which requires a certain amount of time for disciplined rehearsals.
Yellow River Piano
A framed photo on a table top is special. “That was during the Philippine premiere of the Yellow River Piano Concerto at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) in 1975, upon the invitation of maestro Redentor Romero.”
In it are then First Lady lmelda Romualdez Marcos, visiting conductor Guy Taylor, her parents Salvador and Pilar Sala, and husband Joe with their four children. “Cathy, our youngest, was just seven. As you can see in the nearby photo, we have Mrs. Marcos in a more recent picture with Cathy’s youngest, Natalia.”
We’d see more of Imelda in another room entirely dedicated to her. Meanwhile, we moved into another, more airy bedroom which serves as the picture gallery. On the walls are glamour shots of Ingrid and candid photos just as glamorous, and framed glossy magazine covers of her.
An outstanding oil portrait of Ingrid “is a gift from Joe.” There are framed press clippings, one dating back to events in 1962, and another of 2012 announcing the golden jubilee. A framed photo collage depicts Ingrid as a child, teenager as well as recitals and performances through the decades.
As she opened the door to the Imelda Romualdez Marcos Room Ingrid said, “She is my life-long inspiration. I often remember what she said about together making a beautiful world…”
On a wall is a marble cameo of Imelda, and there are photos everywhere. Some of them evoke memorable performances like the one in China at the Beijing Hall of the People, or in Rome’s Collegio Filipino.
Imelda Marcos often asked Ingrid to perform for visiting heads of state in Malacañang. She also brought Ingrid in return visits abroad to perform at corresponding dinners for the hosting heads of the state. Thus Ingrid played for the kings of Saudi Arabia and Morocco, the foreign minister of Mexico, and in New York for VIPs at private concerts held in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
Ingrid made two more royal trips to Morocco. One was to Rabat on the invitation of the King’s daughter, the Princess Lalla Meryem, for a benefit concert. Another was with Imelda for the wedding of a younger princess.
An interesting collage shows Ingrid attending events in Imelda. Marcos’ apartment in Pacific Plaza, and of Imelda at Ingrid’s home for musicales on several occasions. She was a special guest during a “Romantic Piano Concert Journey” with Reynaldo Reyes, about whom we have more to tell as we go along.
“In 1979 China’s Vice Premier Li Hsien Nien came to the Philippines and attended my performance of the Yellow River Piano Concerto at the Philippine International Convention Center,” Ingrid recalls. “I went to China on three occasions with Mrs. Marcos and in one of them I played the Yellow River.”
Photos in another wall show us Ingrid and Joe with President Ferdinand Marcos at family gatherings such as New Year’s Eve in Malacañang, or a cruise on the presidential yacht with Arabian royalty, as well as an informal gathering with actress Brooke Shields.
“I will always be grateful to Mrs. Marcos, especially for her intense motivation which inspired me to do my best and share it,” says Ingrid, adding, “Gratitude is important.”
Golden years
She said she thanked her parents Salvador and Pilar Sala for instilling in her the love for music, and without applying pressure, to excel in the endeavor, and extend it to others. Hence, in 1991 she and her family established the Salvador and Pilar Sala Foundation to honor them.
“The foundation initiated and implemented a 10-year full scholarship Music Development Program which resulted in the Cebu Youth Symphony Orchestra (CYSO) and later the Peace Philharmonic of the Philippines (PPP),” she informs us in a serious tone. “These efforts are well documented in an archive that is an essential part of the memorabilia.”
Those years gave Cebu its golden era of music. The archive attest to that, containing as it does the training and performance activities, videos of lessons, workshops, seminars and performances by the scholars and visiting world-class artists.
Dozens of albums further attest to this, filled with the newspaper clippings, posters and activity profiles. It is a real treasure that includes close to 2,000 recordings of live concerts and recitals.
These are found in the ground floor’s Library Room, along with the photocopies of her handwritten notes she did after her piano lessons. She refers to them ever so often. They represent thousands of hours of assiduous learning. Mostly they are knowledge imparted by Reynaldo Reyes, Joey Contreras and other mentors.
“During those 10 years of the Music Development Program I put my concertizing career on hold,” she confides. “And I wanted to perform so much! In this library you see what I have been doing in recent years. It is fulfillment—mental, emotional, physical.”
Her eyes rest on a bamboo étagère heavy with albums that record intensely the Romantic Piano Concerto Journeys she initiated in 2001 with Reynaldo Reyes. The journey is a two-piano outreach educational project featuring music from the Romantic period, 1800-1900.
In the repertoire are works by 19th-century and early 20th-century composers like Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Grieg, Saint-Saens, Rachmaninoff and Tschaikovsky. “Also some late Beethoven, the actual bridge, between the Classic and the Romantic eras,” she explains.
Ingrid (soloist part) and Reynaldo (orchestra part) play the concertos and explain the works. The audience is encouraged to ask questions, and that can result in informative repartee. You should hear Reynaldo explain how neurons are multiplied by listening to classical music.
The first journey symbolically started in Cebu in January 2001. The tours are held twice a year. So far, Ingrid and Reynaldo have logged over 400 performances all over the Philippines, plus key cities in Southeast Asia and the US.
Each concert has been recorded on video and stored, including an interview with Reynaldo about his involvement in the journeys. Many of these concerts, along with some vintage ones of Ingrid, and those of CYSO and PPP, have been uploaded on Internet’s YouTube, channel “rpcjt” or on www.ingridsalasantamaria.com.
“Our record is seven different concertos played straight in one day,” says Ingrid. “Another time, in Lipa, we gave five concerts in three days. For Luzon journeys we traveled in a convoy with a truck carrying two baby grand pianos. Fred Mendoza was a great help. We no longer bring baby grand pianos but two excellent upright ones.”
They play in school auditoriums, gyms, private homes or hotel ballrooms. “One time Gov. Bong Bong Marcos invited us to play in Paoay’s Malacañang of the North.” Ingrid says. “In Banaue, people said it was the first time they attended a live piano concert. We also love to play in retirement homes, bringing music to senior citizens, who appreciate it very much.”
The journeys have become a major part of my life, 11 years, and counting, Ingrid says with a glow as she pulls out albums at random. A poster for the 20th tour last January at the Makati Medical Center says, “The Brain in Music—Listen, Learn and Interact.”
Often, one journey leads to another. Last January, Ingrid and Reynaldo performed in Roxas City at the home of Dr. Lilia H Cheung, a niece and biographer of fabled Filipina soprano National Artist Jovita Fuentes. There she met Dr. Raymund Conlu who asked them to play at St. Luke’s Global City this July.
‘Romantic Piano’ tour
Ingrid and Reynaldo will embark on their 21st “Romantic Piano Concerto Journey Tour” on July 7, and wind it up by Aug. 23. On July 16 one such concert will be at the Santa Isabel College in Manila. As Ingrid says, “Another expression of gratitude to this venerable institution.”
Ingrid will celebrate her 50th anniversary as a concert pianist with two important musical events. In both she will perform Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, and Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor.
The first will be in Cebu on Sept. 7, 8 p.m., presented by the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel at its ballroom for the benefit of Peace Philharmonic in cooperation with the Arts Council, of which her parents were founding members in 1960. Lyric Piano and Organ Corp., through its president Joy Cristobal, is shipping a handcrafted special Shigeru parlor grand from Manila for Ingrid to play on this occasion.
The orchestral accompaniment will be rendered by the Peace Philharmonic’s chamber quintet—Mark Hamlet Mercado and Reynaldo Abellana (violins); Christian Abaiz (clarinet); Ariel Perez (bassoon); and Christopher Manus (bass). This chamber music accompaniment has been specially commissioned by Ingrid and arranged by professor Jeffrey Solares.
Ingrid considers this unique genre, that of a piano concerto soloist being accompanied by varied chamber group combinations, as her “golden” contribution to her musical niche. The usual concerto collaborations have been with orchestra or a second piano.
“It is an extraordinary genre and I’m quite excited about it,” says Ingrid. “I find great satisfaction in promoting it.” She looks forward to someday recording those performances in CDs in a professional studio setting. They will certainly be an invaluable component of her already extensive documentation.
The next will be on Sept. 16 during a Concert in the Park event at the Luneta in Manila. The Manila Symphony Orchestra (MSO) through its music director Maestro Arturo Molina and executive director Solares, has graciously offered to accompany Ingrid at this golden event. Many MSO members have come out from Cebu-based Sala Foundation’s Orchestra Development Program and MSO is now offering this gesture as a tribute to Ingrid’s efforts in the field.
We take a tour of the balcony surrounding the grand salon. Plaques of appreciation and photos are all over on display tables. There are historic photos, too, with pianists Van Cliburn, Andre Watts and lzumi Tateno; Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and famous conductor Zubin Mehta.
There is a sketch of a Castrillo sculpture which adorns the patio below, a crystal sculpture by Orlina, a wooden bas relief by National Artist Napoleon Abueva featuring five pianos, one of them with a nude (back view) player. “I did not pose for it,” assures Ingrid.
Another surreal sculpture? We asked about the grand piano frame which has been used to accommodate a display of numerous miniature pianos Ingrid has been collecting for many years. She smiles impishly.
lngrid’s house in Magallanes Village is not open to the public but someday, when the collection is complete there may be opportunities to visit by special arrangement. The long range plan is to find a suitable venue for a permanent exposition.
In many ways, this repository is a celebration of Ingrid’s life—past, present and a future that is full of further accomplishments.