D’Sound for Valentine’s Day

As usual, the Valentine’s season in these parts is mainly characterized by the proliferation of performances by the finest music stars. While Filipinos prefer to bond with their families on Christmas and New Year’s Day, they like to go out to watch the shows during Valentine’s, filling up concert arenas, theaters, clubs and just about anywhere where they can listen to their favorite love songs performed live.

This year the pickings are more varied than ever before. We have Regine Velasquez and Ogie Alcasid at the Araneta Coliseum on Feb. 13 and 15; John Ford Coley without England Dan also at the Big Dome on Feb. 14; Boyz II Men minus one member and Brian McKnight at the Ultra; Kuh Ledesma, Zsa Zsa Padilla and Basil Valdez at the Philippine International Convention Center; Patti Austin and James Ingram outside the PICC; Nina at the Folk Arts Theater; the Spiral Staircase; Janno Gibbs; etc., etc. I probably missed out on a few but this list already gives an idea of the variety of entertainment available this Valentine period.

You can also add D’Sound to the list. The famous pop group is one of the top acts to emerge from Scandinavia, land of ABBA, Roxette and others. The group will be the headliner in a special invitational concert on Saturday, Feb. 14 at Shangri-La Plaza’s trendy Streetscape area. I believe D’Sound must be the only foreign pop group with a young following in town at this time. So I suppose those familiar with their hits like Talkin’ Talk, which was used in the famous Nokia commercial some two years ago, plus "Ain’t Giving Up" and "Do I Need a Reason" would want to catch their show. Call the Shangri-La Plaza , tel. no. 633-7851 to find out how to get tickets.

If I remember right, D’Sound visited the Philippines in October 2002 to promote Talkin’ Talk. The group’s third, it had a light radio-friendly pop sound, laced with R&B and drum’n’bass. Pinoys familiar with D’Sound through earlier releases like Spice of Life and Beauty is a Blessing easily warmed up to the Norwegian threesome. Of course, there was also the fact that it was rather difficult to resist the charm of the Talkin’ Talkl commercial being played so often on TV that the song also became a big hit in several Southeast Asian countries.

D’Sound released its fourth album Doublehearted more than a year ago. I do not think this one yielded anything as commercial as Talkin’ Talk. Productionwise though, this one must be the group’s best, with charming melodies and themes that touch the listener. The trio have equal roles to play in creating the music. They share songwriting and arranging credits and this results in songs that flow easily from one to the other. My favorites are Do I Need a Reason, which was the single release I Just Can’t Wait, Dancing into the Moonlight and the title cut.

D’Sound is made up of drummer Kim Ofstad and bass guitarist Jonny Sjo, who met when they were students at Berklee in the US, and singer Simone who comes from Germany but because of D’Sound, is now as Scandinavian as Kim and Jonny. They started out doing acid jazz in Oslo clubs during the early ’90s but as Doublehearted shows, they have come a long way from that with their quite cosmopolitan, original sound.

Valentine’s Day At Mandarin

If you have plans of beginning your Valentine’s Day celebration early, you might want to catch Tonet Salcedo’s debut performance tonight at the Captain’s Bar of the Mandarin Oriental in Makati. The Captain’s Bar has become the favorite of retro music lovers with its line-up of performers doing those golden oldies. Previously featured on Fridays was Ramon Jacinto. At present there are the MOBB band every last Friday of the month and the Spirit of ’67 every Tuesday.

The sultry Tonet Salcedo singing well-loved timeless songs takes over Monday nights. Tonet drew habitues to Weinstube in Malate some years ago until she decided to concentrate on doing interior design and running her restaurant, The Endangered Species. She returns to doing what she loves best, singing. Accompanying Tonet is a powerhouse trio of musicians, Romy Posadas on piano, Roger Herrera on bass and Ramon Guevarra on percussion.

From The Mail

Mr. F. Datu, Jr., wrote in from San Fernando, Pampanga: "For quite sometime now I have been on the look out for your column that might feature the movie music of The Lord of the Rings. In preparation to watching the last of the trilogy, I watched again the DVD of the first of the series, The Fellowship of the Ring. But this time around, I got more drawn to the music. A song, sweetish, melancholic, Irish/Scottish, was sung in its entirety when the movie credits started rolling at the end. I searched from the credits and found that the music score was by Howard Shore. However, the haunting song seems to have been Aniron that was composed and performed by Enya.

I hope you could tell your readers more of the LOTR music but most especially that of the first of the trilogy, of Aniron and of Enya. And if there is any hope of getting a copy of it, I shall be most obliged."

Thank you for writing in Mr. Datu. I plead guilty to missing out on the music of The Return of the King. There are so many new CDs I want to write about but reality says I cannot do them all. Sorry. I did do one or two pieces on The Fellowship of the Ring plus Enya and Aniron three years ago when the film first came out. Will see if I can do another one soon. As for a copy, the soundtracks of all three films are available locally. Check out the music stores and feast to your ears’ content.