The amazing Kabayao Quintet
Us girls living in the college seniors’ hall had a big crush on the swashbuckling bachelor Gilopez Kabayao when he came to our Silliman campus in the late 1950s, and felt naturally jealous when he left his precious Stradivarius violin in the hands of a lucky dormmate, a good friend of his from Negros for safekeeping. We all trooped to Silliman Hall to listen and watch him play, our hearts and pulses rising with the sounds that reverberated from his violin.
After a couple of years or so of performances on campus, we saw him no more, but we learned that music critics rhapsodized about his performance at Carnegie Hall, and of his winning accolades and the most prestigious of awards, among them the President Ramon Magsaysay Award for Outstanding Public Service, the Presidential Award of Merit in Music, Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines, Outstanding Filipino Overseas, Catholic Mass Media Award for Music (in folk songs), Doctor of Humanities (honoris causa) from Central Philippine University, and Doctor of Music from the University of the Philippines. We learned about his having brought music to the most unlikely venues – cockpits, marketplaces, under the trees and classrooms in the remotest of barrios to make pupils and adults aware of the beauty of music — a vision understandably reaping him so many awards.
On Sept. 28, this columnist will be watching him perform — but this time, with four Kabayaos who are more precious than his Stradivarius. This time, it won’t be just girls swooning over him — but it seems, the nation — over the Kabayao Quintet composed of Gilopez, his wife pianist Corazon Pineda, and children violinists Sicielienne, Farida and Gilberto. This amazing family will be performing at the Aurelio Tolentino Hall of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
The invitation sent out by Gilopez’s renowned wife, pianist Corazon, the concert on Sunday is aptly titled “In Celebration.” It’s a way of “bringing together” people to celebrate several milestones, namely:
“Gilopez’s turning 85 this year, thereby celebrating 65 years of an illustrious concert career and musical crusade of creating an appreciative audience for classical music among the young and even those in the provinces;
“Forty five years of musical partnership that saw us in innumerable concerts both in the Philippines and other countries, as well as in hundreds of lecture-recitals in schools meant to introduce fine music to students all over the country; and
“Forty years of a wonderful marriage that brought three musically gifted children, Sicilienne, Farida and Gilberto to form the second generation Kabayao Family Quintet to continue the Kabayao musical tradition that was started by Don Gil Lopez and was passed on to Gilopez’s musician parents, violinist Dr. Doroteo and pianist Marcela Kabayao.”
Gilopez and Corazon were bound together by a mutual love and passion for music. She accompanied him in his performances abroad after she finished her music degree at the UST Conservatory of Music, magna cum laude.
A sweet and gentle lady, Corazon assumes multiple roles: as the family piano accompanist, family business administrator, agricultural farm manager, making four-violin arrangements of music for the family concert repertoire, and over-all planner for the spiritual, educational, medical and cultural thrusts of the Gilopez Kabayao Foundation, Inc. She started teaching her children piano when they were only toddlers. Her efforts paid off.
At age three, the eldest Kabayao child, Sicielienne, started participating in the family’s musical concert tours in the US and Canada. At ten, she won in the voice and violin categories in the National Music Competition for Young Artists (NAMCYA), and was invited as the first featured violinist at the Young Winners Concert in Hong Kong. She finished broadcast communications at the UP in the Visayas. She performed with the Philharmonic Orchestra at her fathers’ 48th anniversary of his Carnegie Hall debut.
Farida has a bachelor of arts degree, major in history, from the UP in the Visayas. At age 12 she won in the National Music Competition for Young Artists in the violin category. What’s more, she is a stage actress, displaying powerful characterizations of Anne Frank in the “Diary of Anne Frank,” Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady,” and Anne Sullivan in the “Miracle Worker.”
At age three, the youngest and only son of Gilopez and Corazon took piano lessons, and at 4, started playing the violin. A pleasant surprise is his excelling in sports as well; he was captain of his high school basketball team and has won medals in PRISAA and YMCA chess tournaments, along with awards in swimming and track events in elementary and high school. A thespian, too, he has played the role of Manasseh in the musical, “Joseph the Dreamer.” He is a freshman at De la Salle-St. Benilde’s College.
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From New York, Ben de Leon, president of The Forum for Family Planning and Development, Inc., and adviser to the Philippine delegation at the UN General Assembly Special Session on the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) writes that the Philippines “is once again in the international news with the appointment of a Filipino-American, Jose ‘Oying’ Rimon II, as director of the prestigious Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland.
Prior to joining Hopkins, Rimon was a senior officer at the Global Health Policy and Advocacy group of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, USA. He led the development and management of a global portfolio of policy and advocacy grants and partnerships covering family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH); maternal, neonatal and child health (MNCH); and nutrition. He was a key planner and core member (with special responsibility for foundations and civil society engagement) of the highly successful London Summit on Family Planning team which raised $2.6 billion of new money from donors. He was the co-chair of the Social and Behavioral Change Working Group of the foundation. He received a “wall of fame” recognition award (given at the foundation’s annual conference) from his peers for his role in the global revitalization of the family planning agenda.
Before joining the Gates Foundation in 2008, he served in leadership positions for 20 years at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He was a founding member and the senior deputy director of the Center for Communication Programs (CCP) at Hopkins covering health behavior and knowledge management programs in at least 45 countries. He was director of CCP’s largest flagship projects (Population Communication Services 3 & 4) and the Health Communication Partnership (HCP), a five-year $200 million global health promotion program funded by USAID.
He is co-author of the books, Health Communication: Lessons from Reproductive Health; the Social Marketing chapter of the textbook Health Behavior and Health Education and Institutionalizing Communication in International Health, a chapter in a recent book, The Handbook of Global Health Communication.
Rimon has an MA in communication research from the University of the Philippines and a post graduate diploma in population studies from the University of Wales College, Cardiff, United Kingdom. Between 1975-1983, he was deputy national program coordinator at the Commission on Population (POPCOM) in the Philippines. In 2004, he was conferred the UP Outstanding Alumni award.
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