Stephanie Reese: The Standing Ovation Queen

In the royalty-crazy world of local showbiz, there are kings and queens, princes and princesses such as Concert King, Concert Queen, Pop Prince, Pop Princess, Teleserye Prince, Teleserye Princess, King and Queen of Television, Queen of Intrigues (you know who she was, don’t you?), and even Denial Kings (marami sila!) and Denial Queens (kasing-dami!).

And then there’s Stephanie Reese, Standing Ovation Queen (you’ll know why by and by).

So when Stephanie sang a few songs (one of them from Phantom of the Opera, Ikaw and Chaka Laka Boom Boom, her own composition) to kick off her presscon last Thursday at La Fontana (in Greenhills, San Juan City), Tempo’s Nestor Cuartero half-jokingly asked Stephanie, “Shouldn’t we stand up to give you an advance standing ovation?”

Even without being asked to, the movie press did give Stephanie a standing ovation for her voice that’s so powerful you couldn’t imagine it coming from a wisp of a lady only 5’1" tall and weighing maybe not even 100 lbs. Stephanie sang so effortlessly that when she hit high notes, even when her voice gradually rose like a tidal wave, she didn’t break into an ear-splitting (Ouch!!!) scream like most local singers do.

I need not tell you why’s called Standing Ovation Queen, a monicker she earned from fans, industry insiders and celebrities in the US who have heard and seen her perform — they said, like Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler and Sarah Brightman put together — with her diverse repertoire of Broadway, opera, ballads, pop, kundiman and, yes, even hip-hop.

That’s the same entrancing voice that won for Stephanie the role of Kim in the German version of Miss Saigon which she did for one year in 1999 in Stuttgart and, later, starring roles in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (in Germany, as Esmeralda), The King and I (London, as Princess Tuptim) and Master Class (Los Angeles, as Sophia and Sharon).

Based in L.A. with her family, Stephanie (part-Chinese, part-Irish, part-Japanese, part-American and mostly-Filipino, her mother surnamed Roco being a Bicolana from Camalig, Albay) is here to do a concert called I Am Stephanie Reese on Oct. 2, 8 p.m. at the Music Museum (with Audie Gemora as guest together with Argentinian dance sensation Sergio   Viglini), the same show she’s mounting at the Carnegie Hall in New York proceeds from which she’s donating to the Gawad Kalinga Foundation. “I want to build a village for 30 poor Filipino families,” she said.

I Am Stephanie Reese was first staged in Teatrino (also in Greenhills, San Juan City) last May. It was a sold-out. In both Music Museum and Carnegie Hall, she’s including in her repertoire four OPMs (Ikaw one of them, also including Dahil Sa’yo) and a song in German from Miss Saigon. She’s the first Fil-Am to perform in Carnegie Hall; two other Filipino artists, Lea Salonga and Regine Velasquez, have performed in the same venue). Stephanie has released two albums, The Voice and Stephanie Reese at Her Best, with a new one coming up in time for her Oct. 2 concert.

Asked if singing in German didn’t distract her from internalizing her role, Stephanie admitted, “Yes, it was frustrating in some ways but I managed very well. Germans emphasize the same parts of a sentence, such as when they say ‘Ich liebe dich’. It means ‘I love you’ which we English-speaking people can say straight from the heart. So I had to memorize the language complete with the inflections.”

She speaks very little Filipino and is trying hard to learn some more.

“ I can say, ‘Kasi I’m not yet fluent in the language, di ba?’ There’s kasi in the beginning of the sentence and di ba in the end,” she laughed. “Good enough.”

It was Lea Salonga, the original Kim, who inspired Stephanie to audition for Miss Saigon.

“My parents were saying, ‘That Filipina girl is so good in Miss Saigon.’ I did and that’s when I became so obsessed with the musical. It was Lea who paved the way for us Filipino artists. She opened our eyes to the reality that, yes, there’s a chance for us to do something on the world stage.”

Stephanie has more than proven her mettle since then. You can’t be called Standing Ovation Queen for nothing.

“It just happened,” said Stephanie. “Everytime I performed, the audience would rise to their feet and ask for more.”

I’m sure that will happen when she performs at the Music Musem and at Carnegie Hall, especially when she does her own version of birit which can send her audience to great heights of excitement and, that’s it, make them stand and applaud and ask for more.

Let’s put our hands together for this “queen” who richly deserves her “title.”

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