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floranteaguilar

Written in 1939, this song is about shining a light and giving hope. Lahat ng Araw, more popularly known as “Silayan” for its opening word, was written by Miguel Velarde, Jr., the same composer of the ever popular Dahil sa Iyo.

I have such deep respect for composers who can write indelible and beloved melodies. A melody by definition must be simple, uncontrived. The act of stringing together a diatonic series of notes that elicits emotions and trancends time is no easy feat.

I believe a great melody comes from something undefinable – the closest thing a composer has of being visited by a muse and leaving you a gift. It is magic.

Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart, Piazzolla, Gershwin, to name a few, and don’t forget, the The Beatles, were definitely visited many times over.

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Utom Videos

by floranteaguilar April 7, 2019

Just dropping these videos today! Concert dates below:

June 1, 2019 – San Francisco International Arts Festival at Fort Mason, SF
Tickets: https://bit.ly/2tYxR1A

June 9, 2019 Brava Theater, SF
Tickets: https://bit.ly/2CcWyMh

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A Sinister Sounding Christmas Song

by floranteaguilar November 25, 2018

There is something about this christmas song, Carol of the Bells, that I’ve always found intriguing. It is probably the darkest and most sinister sounding christmas song that I know of. It was pointed out to me by a friend and fellow composer Roman Turovsky (wiki) that it was a Ukrainian melody written by composer Mykola Leontovych in 1914.

Come to think of it, 1914 was the beginning of World War 1.

Ukraine, still part of Russia at the time, was very much in the middle of the ethnic nationalism spreading in that era. So, cheery songs with lyrics like “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire” would seem out of place and doesn’t exactly elicit a warm feeling, with “open fire” having a bad connotation in the context of war.

So, what does a composer like Leontovicych do? He used a descending half-step bass line repeatedly, conjuring an image of steps descending into hell. Subconsciously or not, it is definitely the opposite of cheery. I would love to see a video using this song with images of World War I juxtaposed.

It also has hints of minimalism with its incessant repeated motif. Just interesting to note.

And by the way, that “open fire” song which is titled The Christmas Song was written in 1946. Guess what, that’s the end of World War II. Happy Happy. What could be cheerier than chestnuts roasting. Enjoy!

P.S. In case you’re curious, I’m using a Jam Man Stereo Pedal Looper.

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Fun with Arranging – Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes #1

by floranteaguilar August 23, 2018

I like goofing around with known classical pieces. I don’t know why I do this but sometimes I hear pieces in my head differently. In my mind, certain pieces work better a certain way based entirely on my personal preference and musical disposition at a given time. Case in point, Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes #1. I actually almost never play or listen to Satie’s music – unless I need something to get me to sleep.

That’s not a knock on Satie. As a composer, I really appreciate Satie’s knack for simple and gorgeous melodies – and the lack of grandiosity and pretensions. He wrote wonderful and memorable little jewels for the piano.

To me, writing beautiful and memorable melodies is much more difficult to write than say, a randomly meandering atonal music, which I sometimes feel is a cop-out. We tend to equate inaccessible music with brilliance. But try setting a goal for yourself and attempt to write melodies that are memorable that you think will stand the test of time. 99.99% of the time, you will fail.

Writing beautiful melodies is super hard! Only a few have this gift. I sometimes think all the good melodies have already been written. The Tchaikovskys and the Schuberts certainly had the monopoly. Definitely, the Beatles took something like 90% of them in the 20th century.

What we are left with are derivatives – an endless variation of regurgitated themes. Yes?

Call me old-fashioned but I think music is meant to be enjoyed viscerally, not so much intellectually. I certainly had that phase in my 20s of playing nothing but avant-garde guitar music (think Luciano Berio and Elliot Carter). There is certainly a time and place for it and I’m thankful and learned so much.

But I do agree whole-heartedly that the cross street of Visceral and Intellectual is the sweet spot in the province of Excellence. Think Beethoven and Stravinsky! To me, Ludwig and Igor’s music is the perfect melding of the intellectually stimulating and the viscerally heart-pounding aspects of this ephemeral art form.

Which brings me back to Erik Satie, the “gymnopedist”. Upon hearing his music, you might regard him as a lightweight. But you would be wrong. Satie was avant-gard at the time (early 20th century) and is often credited as the father of artistic movements such as minimalism, theater of the absurd, and even dada-ism. We just don’t see his brilliance because short melodic songs are common place now. Notice how repetitive pop songs are? Yes, in my mind, he also fathered pop music itself!

So, here is my tribute to this” lightweight” composer Erik Satie. Roll in your grave if you must, Mr. E. but this is my take of your beloved melody.

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Music Video – Death of Isagani (Pagkamatay ni Isagani)

by floranteaguilar April 8, 2018

Excerpt from Aswang the Concert performed and recorded live at the Napa Valley College Performing Arts Center.

PAGKAMATAY NI ISAGANI (Death of Isagani)

This is the story of Isagani, a fisherman-by-day and spy-by-night during the Philippine revolution. The song finds him being pursued by the Spanish soldiers through the jungles of Cavite province after a failed mission.

Isagani was racing to escape to the ocean and rendezvous with his love Candida but he was shot just before reaching the cliff. He falls to his death into the waters.

Legend has it that he was revived by ‘syokoys’ – humanoid sea creatures whom Isagani once saved when they were trapped by fishing nets. As he became one of them, the memory of Candida and his former life fades.

From ASWANG THE CONCERT
Music and Lyrics by FLORANTE AGUILAR
Directed by FIDES ENRIQUEZ
Isagani – KYLE DE OCERA
Performed by FANDANGUEROS
FLORANTE AGUILAR, guitar
CHUS ALONSO, laud
SAGE BAGGOTT, percussion
GREG KEHRET, Bass

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How to Write a Song When You’re in a Rut

by floranteaguilar January 15, 2018

Florante talks about one of the most reliable technique he uses when writing a song, especially when stuck in a rut. The song is called Ang Tumao, one of the songs for the Aswang Song Cycle.

Here’s a link to listen to the full song:

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Rosas Pandan

by floranteaguilar December 25, 2017

Not exactly a Filipino Xmas song but definitely in the same festive spirit. Rosas Pandan is a Visayan folksong that speaks of a maiden who came down from the mountains to celebrate fiesta. Lots of dancing, singing and courtship ensued. Happy Holidays!

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ASWANG the Concert Coming to Napa January 2018

by floranteaguilar December 13, 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ASWANG Comes Alive in Napa on January 28, 2018

December 13, 2017 (NAPA, CALIFORNIA) – New Art Media Productions, the makers of the award-winning HARANA documentary, will kick off the New Year with a live concert for their upcoming feature film, ASWANG, Mga Kwentong Halimaw, a dramatized song cycle exploring stories of fantastical creatures from Philippine folklore, on Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 4pm at Napa Valley College Performing Arts Center.

“ASWANG is inspired by Philippine monster and ghost stories that we enjoyed telling each other when we were growing up in the province. I wanted those creatures to come alive and tell their own stories from their point of view.” – Florante Aguilar, Composer

In the re-telling of the stories of the Aswang, or popular Philippine mythological monsters and ghosts, themes of resilience, survival and persistence are explored. A featured monster is the Manananggal, a commoner by day and a hideous creature by night capable of severing her upper torso and flying into the night to satisfy her hunger for human flesh, is presented within the context of colonial history. Also featured are the stories of the Tumao (a mysterious ape-like beast who roams the mountains of Mount Banahaw in Quezon Province), the Syokoy (a fearsome being of the deep, dark seas), the Tikbalang (a horrifying trickster with a human body and the head of a horse), and the Lady in White (a tormented soul wandering the streets of modern day Manila).

The power of myth depends on who tells the story. In this concert, the Aswang tells their side of the story. Who among us is the real Aswang?

Created, written and produced by husband and wife team Florante Aguilar and Fides Enriquez, ASWANG is an 80-minute live concert featuring Bay Area musical gems: Kristine Sinajon, Leon Palad, Kyle De Ocera, and Los Angeles performing artists, Charmaine Clamor and Giovanni Ortega. Original music is composed by Florante Aguilar and performed live by his ensemble the Fandangueros: Chus Alonso, Sage Baggott, and Greg Kehret.

The one-time concert, a non-profit project of Theater Residencies Inc. will take place on

January 28, 2018 at 4pm at the state-of-the-art Napa Valley College Performing Arts Center.

Tickets range from $12 – $35. Advance tickets and group rates can be purchased at

https://aswangconcert.brownpapertickets.com

For more information please visit https://floranteaguilar.com/aswang

New Art Media Productions supports the works of artists Florante Aguilar and Fides Enriquez. The Napa-based production house focuses on turning these artists’s visions into reality through the medium of music recordings, films and live theater productions.

For inquiries, please contact:

By Email: fides@newartmedia.com

By Phone: (415) 613-0584

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Florante Receives 2016 Gerbode Composition Award

by floranteaguilar February 6, 2017

On February 1, 2017, the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation announced that Florante Aguilar along with presenting organization KulArts, are one of the six recipients of $50,000 grants to support the creation and production of new music by California composers.

Billed as “today’s most influential composers”, the Gerbode Foundation’s past awardees include Terry Riley, John Adams, Lou Harrison, the Kronos Quartet, as wells as from other artistic disciplines such as Tony Kushner and Alonzo King.

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of six $50,000 grants to support the creation and production of new music by California composers.

The works will be commissioned and premiered by Bay Area nonprofit organizations. Each organization will receive a $50,000 grant that will be used for a commissioning fee of $12,500 or more to each composer, with the remaining funds going to the presenting organization for expenses related to the creation and premiere of the pieces. The resulting new music works will have their world premiere public performances in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 2017 and June 2019. The grants are made in partnership with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which also provided funding for the commissions.

The recipients of the 2016 Music Composition Awards are (in alphabetical order by organization):

Cultural Odyssey / Idris Ackamoo
WE LIVE HERE! will be an evening long musical theater production composed by Cultural Odyssey’s founding Executive/Co-Director and resident composer, Idris Ackamoor. The score is inspired by the musical movements that made San Francisco a welcoming and nurturing world destination for musicians, tourists, and fans. WE LIVE HERE! will premiere in the Spring of 2019 as part of Cultural Odyssey’s 40^th Anniversary Season.

Kitka, Inc. / Janet Kutulas
Iron Shoes, a contemporary, neo-feminist folk opera, will transform source material drawn from Eastern European fairytales into a contemporary performance experience. Even after over 20 years of performing and composing music for Kitka, Iron Shoes will be Janet Kutulas’s first large-scale composed work. Iron Shoes will premiere in the Spring of 2018.

Kularts / Florante Aguilar
Utom is a contemporary composition in five movements inspired by a mythical story of the deity Boi Henwu and is informed by musical traditions and indigenous instruments of the T’boli people of the Philippines. This work is an important continuation for musician and composer Florante Aguilar to develop and build upon his “new found” genre and musical voice. Utom will premiere in the Spring of 2019.

Other Minds / Brian Baumbusch
The Pressure will be a concert-length multimedia work based on themes of early German expressionism that accompanied the rise of fascism. The scores will be performed by a mixed ensemble including the Friction String Quartet and The Lightbulb Ensemble, a trailblazing group of twelve percussionists that performs on a set of instruments that Brian Baumbusch designed and built, and that were inspired by Indonesian gamelan instruments. The Pressure will premiere in the Spring of 2018.

San Francisco Girls Chorus / Fred Frith
Fred Frith’s unique compositional process with the 45-member SF Girls chorus will result in a new 20-minute work. Members of the chorus will participate in a series of workshops led by Frith and Bay Area instrumentalists well versed in improvised and scored musical performance practices. The new composition will take form and be developed based on a process of interaction, suggestion, and creative collaboration. The premiere will take place in the Spring of 2019.

Women’s Audio Mission / Real Vocal String Quartet
Culture Kin is an innovative and cross-cultural musical suite that the Real Vocal String Quartet will create with artists from San Francisco’s international sister cities. Culture Kin will explore the intersection of classical and world musical traditions while using Women’s Audio Mission professional recordings as a creative “instrument” in this new compositional process. Culture Kin will premiere in the Spring of 2019.

“We are thrilled to be able to continue to support projects that promote and advance the work of innovative California composers and presenters in this challenging fiscal environment,” said Stacie Ma’a, the president of the Gerbode Foundation. “This year’s recipients represent some of the most unique and ambitious processes for creating new musical works and include some of today’s most influential composers.”

“These grant recipients will create new music that challenges and inspires diverse audiences around the Bay Area,” said John E. McGuirk, director of the Hewlett Foundation’s Performing Arts Program, which provided funding for the grants. “We are pleased to support these composers and organizations creating new work that is essential to maintaining a vibrant arts community.”

The Gerbode Foundation was assisted in making these grants by an advisory panel composed of the following nationally respected music experts:

Kate Dumbleton is the Artistic and Executive Director for the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the MA program in Arts Administration and Policy. Kate joined the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and SAIC in the fall 2012 from the position of Executive Director of the critically acclaimed Chicago Jazz Ensemble, resident at Columbia College since 1965. Her work in jazz, improvised music and performance spans nearly two decades.Kate’s experience includes music direction for jazz clubs and festivals; curatorial direction of artist residencies; direction of interdisciplinary projects in music, dance, theater, visual art, film; venue and record label management; administrative direction; and artist management. She owned and operated a successful performance, exhibition space/wine bar in the Bay Area from 2000-2006. Kate’s current affiliations include the Advisory Council for the Chicago Artists Resource and ChicagoMusic.org; Board of Directors for the Experimental Sound Studio (ESS); Board of Directors for Rova Arts (SF).

Walter Kitundu is an artist who creates kinetic sculptures and sonic installations, develops public works, builds (and performs on) extraordinary musical instruments, while researching and documenting the natural world. He is the inventor of a family of Phonoharps, multi-stringed instruments made from record players that rely on the turntable’s sensitivity to vibration. Kitundu has created hand-built record players driven by the wind and rain, fire and earthquakes, birds, light, and the force of ocean waves. In 2008 he received a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition his work in this field. His eclectic art practice includes receiving a major public art commission, creating a complex site-specific installation in a small-town museum, developing wildly imaginative instruments for a string quartet, composing for dance and theatrical production, teaching sculpture at the university level, engaging in fieldwork with wild birds of prey, and heading the design and fabrication of environments for learning at a prominent science institution.

Arturo O’Farrill, pianist, composer, and educator, was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music. Learn more about ALJA here: http://www.afrolatinjazz.org. As a composer, he has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Philadelphia Music Project, The Apollo Theater, Symphony Space, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Arturo’s well-reviewed and highly praised Afro-Latin Jazz Suite from the current album CUBA: The Conversation Continues (Motéma) took the 2016 Grammy Award (his fourth) for Best Instrumental Composition. He is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and director of Jazz Studies at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.

About the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation
The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation is interested in programs and projects offering potential for significant impact. The primary geographical focus is on the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaii. The Foundation’s interests generally fall under the categories of arts and culture, environment, reproductive rights and health, citizen participation, building communities, inclusiveness, strength of the philanthropic process and the nonprofit sector, and foundation-initiated special projects.

About the Special Awards Program
For more than twenty-five years, the Gerbode Foundation has made innovative grants through its Special Awards Program to Bay Area arts institutions to commission new works from choreographers, playwrights, and composers. The Special Awards Program has also supported visual artists, poets, and multimedia artists.In a time of cultural shifts and fiscal insecurity in the arts, these coveted, nationally respected awards have helped underwrite culturally and aesthetically diverse, acclaimed new works by prominent artists and emerging ones. These grants have supported artists at critical junctures in their careers; enabled nonprofit local arts groups to develop and debut substantial, original works; and enriched Bay Area audiences, readers, and viewers by giving them first access to ambitious new creations.

About the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a nonpartisan, private charitable foundation that advances ideas and supports institutions to promote a better world. For 50 years, the foundation has supported efforts to advance education for all, preserve the environment, improve lives and livelihoods in developing countries, promote the health and economic well-being of women, support vibrant performing arts, strengthen Bay Area communities and make the philanthropy sector more effective.The foundation’s Performing Arts Program makes grants to sustain artistic expression and encourage public engagement in the arts in the San Francisco Bay Area, to give California students equal access to an education rich in the arts, and to provide necessary resources to help organizations and artists be effective in their work.

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Cavite el Viejo – Poblacion & Marulas

by floranteaguilar November 16, 2016

An ode to my hometown of Kawit, Cavite (formerly known as Cavite el Viejo) the suite consists of 12 movements named after the town’s barrios. The first two movements, Poblacion and Marulas, are barrios I spent a lot of time riding my bike to from our house in Gahak. These were also the streets where Filipinos first raised their flag and defiantly declared independence from Spain in 1898. These areas are now the Aguinaldo Shrine and Park, named after the general who led the independence movement.

These areas are now unrecognizable from what I remember in the seventies. It is surrounded by major highways, quite congested and no longer feels like a province. Not a conducive place to bike for an 11-year-old that’s for sure. Kawit being a coastal town, I remember rows upon rows of stalls where fresh oysters were sold in buckets made of sawali, caught from the water just behind them. Manileños were known to drive to Cavite just for these stalls. Sadly, these areas are now esteros – polluted and undrained standing water. This is just one of the many changes that highlighted the dissonance between what I remember and what is now the reality.

So, yes Cavite el Viejo is a dreamy ode to what’s no longer there. An area that exist only in my mind. And I hope to post more of these discordant scenarios when I post the other movements in the next few weeks/months. Some are unfinished and I’m continually working on. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the music.

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