On a volcanic lakeshore, music comes alive again

After hibernating for months like many of us, six orchestra musicians were aching to get out and play.

When they finally did, they didn’t just meet up at some rehearsal space in the city. They fled their comfort zones and performed ankle-deep in Taal Lake with its notoriously active volcano directly behind them.

One could say that caper was the closest that respectable classical musicians could get to a primal scream.

In that surreal situation in that unlikely place, they emerged from quarantine to create enchanting live music, with all the exuberance of artists set free from the prison of a pandemic.

Their main piece in the water was “Ole Guapa,” a tango crowd pleaser from 1936.

But this jaunty rendition was played with no crowd, except for the odd, curious lake fisherman. Live musicians of course love crowds, but so does the coronavirus, so no mass gathering to appreciate this rare event.

(Disclosure: Aside from the public beach, they also played and filmed on my Batangas property)

There are of course the videos that accompany this article, the filming of which was the official reason for this bewitching harmony of wind instruments and bird song, with the occasional intrusion of a passing boat.

“It was one of the best moments in my entire life,” flutist Marie Poblete messaged me afterwards.

She and her five colleagues who met up at the lake, all musicians with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, had all been stuck at home rehearsing and recording alone during the pandemic, not knowing when they could play as a group again.

An orchestra after all is a group of musicians meant to create music together. Playing their music alone at home was like a fish separated from its school.

They did record at home, their parts of the songs they would play at the lake, just so they’d have audio versions free of the birds and boats that would be embedded with the video.

Two of the musicians co-own a music store, Musicgear Manila, which was celebrating its seventh anniversary, so they decided that would be the occasion to finally emerge from isolation to meet up.

Marie Poblete has been a member of the orchestra for 24 years, always playing and traveling with fellow musicians, until the lockdown sent them all home indefinitely.

Five of the six play wind instruments, all using their mouths to convert their breaths into music. The sixth, Aimee Mina-De la Cruz, plays the vibraphone.

That also means removing their masks and possibly blowing the Covid virus into the air. That occurred to them, of course, and they prepared for it by quarantining and getting tested negative before their trip.

The risk of Covid was also a main factor for choosing an outdoor space for their pandemic debut. Research shows that the risk of Covid infection is at least 20 times less outdoors than indoors.

“A few days after returning from the shoot, we all tested negative again,” Marie said. “Covid cannot stop us from doing what we love to do. The moment we started playing music, all our worries disappeared.”

Taking classical music out of a concert hall and into a natural setting was not just a safety measure. In fact, it seemed like a natural thing to do, especially when the video’s directors learned that classical soloists like the Croatian cellist Stjepan Hauser appear in videos performing on mountain slopes and in front of waterfalls.

However, no one else seems to have performed in the shadow of a live volcano that had erupted just a year earlier.

“Many people miss nature. We also miss watching people perform. We combined those two insights into our concept... We imagined that the waters and the volcano in the background complement our repertoire,” explained Julie Anne Dupaya, one of the co-directors of the music videos that came out of this adventure.

For their lake shoot, they rose in the early morning darkness to catch the dawn. “That was the best moment for me,” said John Peter Bautista, an oboe player and, at 24, the youngest member of the group.

“Seeing the sun rise while we were playing was so fulfilling. It gave me hope that one day, we’ll get through this and everything will be okay.” — LA, GMA News

Set List and Performers:

1. Siciliano by J.S. Bach
Ariel Sta. Ana- Clarinet
Aimee Mina -De la Cruz- Vibraphone

2. Dinner for Two by Leonhard Waltersdorfer
Aimee Mina-De la Cruz- Vibraphone

3. Ole Guapa by Arie Malando
Marie Poblete- flute
John Peter Bautista- oboe
Ariel Sta. Ana- clarinet
Ernani Pascual- french horn
Frenvee Andra- bassoon

Video producers: Julie Anne Dupaya, Biboy Royong