Gerard... if he weren’t into music

Although most people are under the impression that he had always wanted to pursue a career in music like his sister Lea, Gerard Salonga says it didn’t start out that way for him.

“I didn’t even consider music as a career until halfway through college here,” says Gerard, who eventually graduated summa cum laude from the Berklee College of Music in the US. The resident conductor of the ABS-CBN Philharmonic Orchestra and one of the brightest young musical directors, conductors and arrangers in the country, Gerard actually wanted to be a journalist. His childhood idol was the late Max Soliven of The Philippine STAR.

“I’ve always loved writing,” reveals Gerard. “We had journalism class in high school, and it turned me on to journalism. I was part of the school paper. I really wanted to be a journalist. I went to college to be a journalist. I wanted to be Max Soliven. I wanted to be him. He was my idol.”

But then life has a funny way of choosing a person’s life course. Gerard went to college (at the Ateneo de Manila, where his sister Lea also studied) to major in journalism, but while there, he also dabbled in theater through an organization called Blue Repertory. It was, and still is, a student organization for those interested in the performing arts. He was often assigned to the music department. “That’s when I said, ‘I could do this for a job. This is fun.’”

After Gerard graduated, Ryan Cayabyab — probably seeing Gerard’s potential — invited him to sit in on his class to see if he could handle it on an academic level because, as Mr. C (as Ryan is called in the industry) put it, it was one thing to enjoy playing the piano for fun, and another thing entirely to study technical things about music, like music theory. It turned out that Gerard had a head for the technical stuff as well, and eventually flew to the US to pursue further studies in music. It meant giving up writing and journalism, but Gerard says there are a lot of similarities between them.

“The art of writing an arrangement or a composition is very similar to writing a literary piece,” explains Gerard. “There’s an introduction, there’s an exposition, there’s a development and a climax, so it’s very much like literary writing. Contour, contrast, color — there’s a lot of it there.”

Since then, Gerard has fully embraced a career in music, now going on its 14th year. He has led the Manila productions of Carousel, Baby, They’re Playing Our Song, Dreamgirls, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd and Little Women. He served as the music director of FILharmoniKA for six years, and during that period conducted all the major orchestras in the Philippines. He was also a frequent guest conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HKPO). One of the more memorable collaborations he had with the Hong Kong Philharmonic was AK 100, a special event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Gerard also arranged a special musical number performed by Coco Lee and the HKPO for the gala performance celebrating the 15th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China.

Last month, Gerard made his debut with the Shanghai Opera Orchestra and Chorus in a concert celebrating the music of Les Miserables and Miss Saigon creators Alain Boublil and Claude Michel Schonberg titled Do You Hear the People Sing featuring Michael Ball and his sister, Lea.

Gerard will be working with Lea again as she celebrates her 35th anniversary via a concert, titled Playlist on Dec. 6 and 7 at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC). He will be her concert’s musical director. Gerard says that while conventional wisdom dictates that it’s hard to work with a sibling — especially one known for being as exacting and as much of a perfectionist as Lea — contrary to what people think, he finds it easy. “We’ve been doing it for so long, and she knows the role, she knows how to work in a system like this. She also understands my authority as the musical director. There’s a lot of trust there, so that’s good.”

Gerard is looking forward to more collaborations, not just with his famous sister, but with other artists as well — and surely, the industry will be all the better for it.