I first witnessed and heard Triple Fret play live onstage over a year ago, when they fronted for the concert “Berta Rojas Live in Manila” at the Meralco Theater.
Already, at the time, they held the promise of becoming a showstopper: three young female classical guitarists, evidently well-trained, and all imbued with evident passion for the kind of extraordinary music they were producing.
No surprise was it then to learn, about a couple of months ago, that they had won first prize at the 27th Japan Guitar Ensemble Festival held on June 28 at the Kyurian Hall in Shinagawa, Tokyo.
It seems that Jenny de Vera, Iqui Vinculado and Marga Abejo had been invited by Philippine Ambassador to Japan Manolo Lopez to play at the Philippine Independence Day reception at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo a couple of weeks earlier.
They then took the opportunity to join the guitar fest, where they also wound up bagging the Japan Guitar Association Award, the Kohno Guitar Award, and the Harumi Award for Best Performance of an Original Contemporary Composition for Guitar Ensemble.
Soon after, upon their triumphant if quiet return to Manila, the Internet became rife with video clips of some of their recorded performances. These included their cover of Bohemian Rhapsody, that beloved anthem of the ages courtesy of Freddie Mercury and Queen. I turned into a complete fan.
As luck would have it, the incomparable jazz doyenne Sandra Viray posted a live music schedule for the weekends of July to September, at The Café of the Hyatt City of Dreams. “Blues, Moods & Grooves,” these were billed. Quite a line-up, too, starting with diva Cooky Chua and Color It Red, and including Maegan Aguilar and the Flippin’ Soul Stompers for the initial “True Blues” sets.
Triple Fret was with “Cool Grooves,” while the “In the Mood” bunch was headlined by Brass Munkeys, The Executives Band, and the Hyatt All-Star trio of Henry Katindig, Colby de la Calzada and Jun Viray, with saxophonist Alvin Cornista bringing up the rear for the start of September.
If the City of Dreams simply lay at one end of any rainbow that wasn’t clear across town through non-fatal traffic that only fatalists can accept, then I might have tried to catch each of those gigs. But Macapagal Avenue past Roxas Blvd. in Aseana City meant at best a 90-minute drive from our neck of the metropolitan woods, so I had to miss out on dear Cooky as well as the Flippin’ Soul Stompers, which had last blown me off my sockless sneakers a long time back when Master’s Den was still alive on Shaw Blvd.
That left Triple Fret for the evening of Aug. 8, thankfully a free Saturday and not a Friday payday that was less conducive to foetalists who don’t mind curling up in some transport womb until they’re thankfully delivered to mythic destinations.
It turned out to be a wonderful evening of guitar ensemble music, enjoyed with a son who himself had been adept with the instrument. In fact it turned out that while he was a generation removed from these girls, they had shared the same early mentor with the six-strings, maestro Lester Demetillo, at the UP College of Music.
The Triple Fret doing a Kali on a single guitar
It also turned out that this son once had occasion to review a Triple Fret performance, for GMA News Online on June 11, 2012:
“Noteworthy… was the set played by three female classical guitarists who call themselves, collectively, Triple Fret. That all three ladies are undeniably well-trained classical guitarists is impressive enough, as classical guitar is one of the most difficult things to do on earth. That all three of them are attractive to boot is proof that life is seldom fair.” (by Aya Yuson)
I dug up that quote when I had to Google Triple Fret for more info, even after we managed to converse with them after their Hyatt Café gig that night.
Last Saturday, they played again at the same venue, but as of this writing, I couldn’t be sure about a repeat as fan, much as we had enjoyed that first one — thanks to Sandra and Jun Viray as well as Hyatt F&B manager Stijn Van Leeuwen, all of 6-feet-8 of him as gracious host. Yes, thanks much for the shots of Glenfiddich 15 to wash down slabs of excellent Mayura Wagyu.
That night, too, Triple Fret accommodated one request for a piece. They were happy to note that it’s already deeply imbedded in their repertoire. Yes, of course: Bohemian Rhapsody. Thanks much, Marga, Iqui & Jenny.
They first got together in 2011 to practice what would become an extensive repertoire of Spanish guitar pieces, tangos, jazz standards, Filipino traditional music, and classical pieces, and infuse these with a style uniquely their own. Marga relates that she thought up their band name: “How about Triple Fret? It sounds like triple threat, but it also stands for the part of the guitar.” As an all-female guitar trio, they proved to be a unique cum lovely triple threat, all right.
Formally trained at UP College of Music and the UST Conservatory of Music, they first appeared together in a mini concert at the UP School of Economics. Since then, critical and popular acclaim has been easily won.
They’ve shared their music at the 3rd International Guitar Festival and the Philippine Pasinaya Festival, both held at the CCP, the 1st Philippine International Jazz and Blues Festival, the 6th Backdoor Ventures Arts and Music Festival, and the 2013 Fete de la Musique Manila. Their first solo concert at the Paco Park in Manila received rave reviews.
They’ve also held a concert at the Jerudong International School Arts Centre in Brunei, and won the Tarrega International Guitar Festival Ensemble Competition in Malaysia last year. They’ve had a debut album launch at Ayala Museum, in May of last year, where they played with special guest GuiGuil (Guitar Guild).
Also last year, Triple Fret played in Madrid upon the invitation of Philippine Ambassador to Spain Carlos Salinas and the director of Casa America, Hon. Tomás Poveda. They got a standing ovation, as headlined in Guidepost’s issue of Aug. 9, 2014, where a review by Toni Everitt also appeared. Here’s an excerpt:
“They played with a quiet confidence I have not seen in such a new band in a long time.
“… The girls were diverse in the way they played their guitars. They not only strummed the strings, they also used their guitars as percussion instruments. They tapped with their hands and drummed with their nails on the guitars to create different sound effects. Triple Fret’s final song was their most interesting and impressive. They all shared one guitar in order to play Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid. It was a novel and amusing party trick and the crowd loved it, everyone was clapping along.
“Triple Fret is a fantastic new band and if they keep the standard they are currently playing at, I am sure they are going to go far.”
At the Hyatt Café, here’s how our own little conversation went, mostly on their recent win in Japan.
“Marga: Actually we went there just to try and learn something, because Japanese guitar ensembles are some of the best. They’re very accurate; they’re very in sync. So wala kaming ine-expect kasi sino ba naman kami, dayo kami, tapos kami lang ‘yung foreigner doon. So puro Japanese yung kalaban namin. Pagkatapos naming tumugtog lahat, they were telling us, ‘Uy, kayo, ang galing n’yo. kayo yung number one sa akin.’ Yung mga Hapon kasi na buong audience, they like to rank.’
“Jenny: The acoustics in the hall wasn’t so good. That makes me nervous, when the acoustics aren’t good. I wasn’t happy with my performance. And when we went to the dressing room, our competitors from the Niibori Guitar Orchestra, they were practicing in the dressing room, and OMG, they were so good! I was like, ‘Guys, let’s go home.’”
But that competitor wound up in third place. Marga offers that she still doesn’t know what happened.
“Maybe because a Japanese friend of ours told us, ‘Bring out the Filipino character.’ Kasi ‘yun lang ‘yung pwede naming ilaban. So our last piece was a Filipino piece. We were given only 10 minutes. We played the 3rd movement of Concerto in D by Vivaldi, followed by Baiao de Gude by Paolo Belinati, and then Pandangguhan by Resti Umali. The first was arranged by Carston Link, one of our mentors, a German guitarist. The second was really originally composed for three guitars. The last was arranged by our teacher, Lester Demetillo.
“It was just one day of competition. And then we won first prize, plus other awards. Cash prizes and certificates. And happiness!”
I asked how they felt when it wasn’t in a concert hall where they’re playing, what goes through their heads when they have to accept reality — that playing in bars and cafés doesn’t always guarantee a rapt audience. I think it was the quiet Iqui whom I pressed for an answer.
“I just think it’s not really about us but about the music that we’re trying to share. There are different venues. Wherever, we always have to give it our best. Even if we reach only one person.”
Her partners verify that. “Yes, at first we weren’t comfortable playing in small bars and weird places where people won’t listen. But the thing was, when the three of us committed to the fact that we’re gonna play our best and play genuinely, and just play without caring about other people, some people do listen and everyone ends up listening. And the audience will feel that also, that you’re enjoying what you’re doing. It’s also good training for us, that we can play in all-weather situations, so wherever we may find ourselves competing, we can be confident knowing we’ve played in all sorts of venues.”
Future plans? “We’ll be back in Malaysia soon for the Tarrega Guitar Fest 2015, where we won last year, so we were invited again but not as competitors any more. We’re having a Thanksgiving concert on Sept. 19 at the UP Manila Museum.
We’re preparing for our next album under PolyEast Records. It will be launched late this year. All-OPM. We’ll also have a European tour by next summer. We already have concerts scheduled in Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland… Then we’re going back to Japan again since we’re invited as the last winners.”
Yes, the future looks and sounds good for Triple Fret. If you want to catch some of their recorded performances, visit http://triplefretguitar.strikingly.com/ and enjoy their covers of Vivaldi Concerto in D Major, Calypso (Jamaican), Baio de Gude, Jota Aragonaise, Danza del Sur, Manang Biday and Ugoy ng Duyan.
And Bohemian Rhapsody.