Odette at 60: Evolving musicality showcased in birthday concert

MANILA, Philippines — Ten years after her decision to reignite her performing career at age 50, Odette Quesada is riding high on the wave of an instructive career resurgence armed only with a potent combination of self-penned OPM (original Pilipino music) hits, quick wit and idiosyncratic performing savvy.

As a singer, Odette, who turned 60 last Jan. 13, has had her share of signature singles like Friend of Mine and Dito Lang. But she’s even more prolific as a songwriter responsible for the hits of some of the country’s biggest recording artists — like Sharon Cuneta (To Love Again, You’re the One), Kuh Ledesma (Till I Met You, A Long, Long Time Ago), Ric Segreto (Give Me a Chance, Don’t Know What to Do, Don’t Know What to Say), Gary Valenciano (Growing Up), Raymond Lauchengco (Farewell, I Need You Back), Verni Varga (Love Me Again) and Ariel Rivera (Ayoko na Sana).

So it’s almost impossible to attend any of her concerts and not get lured into a rousing sing-along session — a feel-good viewer-performer interaction that transforms the concertgoing experience into something that feels like a communal undertaking.

Odette’s compositions, many of them written about 40 years ago, continue to serve her well because songs about romance and heartbreak have a way of resonating with hopeless romantics from different generations. They speak of universal truths and shared experiences that transcend time, gender, social status or personal circumstance.

What makes her reenergized popularity even more impressive is how Odette’s songs have kept her in the limelight even after she reluctantly decided to migrate to the United States in 2001 with her husband, fellow hitmaker Bodgie Basig (Sana Dalawa ang Puso Ko, Ale), who succumbed to cancer in 2012.

“When I was writing them, I didn’t have an inkling if anyone would like them at all,” she recalled in a previous interview with this writer. “I thought they’d have a shelf life of probably 10 years…but the Pinoys’ penchant for love songs is keeping my songs alive. They’re my legacy. I can’t be any happier knowing they will live on long after I’m gone.”

Odette, along with OPM legend Celeste Legaspi, received the 2024 Pinoy Playlist Music Festival’s Ryan Cayabyab Award for Music Excellence last Jan. 16.

If you think you’ve got Odette and her music all figured out, think again. Her sold-out birthday concert series “Odette Hits 60,” helmed by Rowell Santiago and produced by Noel Ferrer and their partners from Anything is Possible, will prove you wrong. The show wraps up its four-performance run at the BGC Arts Center on Friday.

In fact, of the 20 numbers in the show’s main lineup rendered by Odette and her special guest last Friday, South Border’s sinewy voiced Jay Durias, only the previously unreleased ballad Zero Gravity is “associated” with Odette — and she didn’t even write it! She made sure, however, that concertgoers wouldn’t leave the theater disappointed, sending them off with a celebratory 26-minute “surprise” segment.

Zero Gravity was specifically written for her years ago by her husband Bodgie as an anniversary gift. Guaranteed to tug at music lovers’ heartstrings, the melodically lush and earnestly worded track will snugly keep her post-pandemic hit Habang Panahon company in what can only be described as Odette’s Bodgieverse — a transfixing collection of revisited compositions inspired by Bodgie’s undying affection for her.

If you were moved by Habang Panahon’s defiant romanticism (“Habang panahon, hanggang sumalangit na/ Ikaw lamang ang tanging nag-iisa/ Sa puso ko”), Zero Gravity is guaranteed to win you over with its heartwarming simplicity: “There’s no space and time between us/ No yesterday or someday/ There’s no beginning, no end/ There’s only you and me… and zero gravity.”

Aside from the aforementioned titles, the show’s carefully curated selection of songs benefits from Odette’s no-frills troubadour-style singing and contemplative tone. While a patchwork of photos and mementos are flashed on the video wall to accentuate the element of nostalgia, each tune is arranged and sung to hew closely to her storytelling gifts and folk-pop musical influences.

The good news is, none of them sounds like either a deficient copycat or a merely perfunctory cover — from her jazzed-up rendering of Randy Crawford’s One Day I’ll Fly Away and Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now to Carole King’s So Far Away and a lambently luscious iteration of Sting’s Fields of Gold.

If you’re partial to power ballads and stadium-capturing crowd-pleasers, you’re in for delectable treats that put a fresh spin on karaoke staples, like Sergio Mendes’ Never Gonna Let You Go, Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me, Patti Austin’s In My Life and Baby Come to Me, Barry Manilow’s I Made It Through the Rain, and a polarizingly improvised take on the Doobie Brothers’ What a Fool Believes.

Some of them may be rough around the edges, but it’s hard not to get swept off your feet by the disarming sounds that come out of the synchronized spontaneity and inspired improvisations of Odette, her guests and the show’s seasoned musicians headed by musical director Marvin Querido.

And if you still think Odette doesn’t have the flair and chutzpah to perform songs that are helping the lucrative OPM market scale greater heights these days, wait till you hear how she taps into Lola Amour’s poignant themes and catchy syncopation in Raining in Manila — arguably the concert series’ flashiest and most groovesome number (aside from the aforementioned surprise number’s built-in appeal).

More notably, she even manages to make TJ Monterde’s monster Spotify hit Palagi her own as she transposes its romantic narrative with what she calls her “love-hate relationship” with her home country. As Odette explained, “I may be (based) in the US now, but my heart will always be in the Philippines.”