Church reaches 100 years/Steph Trick, jazz stride wonder

The Church Among the Palms (CAP) at the University of the Philippine-Los Banos campus will cap its centennial anniversary on Nov. 23 with the theme, “Widening the Doors to Share God’s Love” based on 2 Corinthians 9 : 8: “And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”

The church began celebrating its 100th year anniversary with several activities: a Konsyerto Para sa Sentenaryo 1 featuring the Silliman University choir and the Letran Calamba choir last January; a  Konsyerto Para sa Sentenaryo 2 with Prof. Anna Skagersten and the Swedish Musicians with Luz Pagcaliwagan and her students in February; Konsyerto Para sa Sentenaryo 3 featuring a renowned pianist, Prof. Greg Jusue Zuniega and his friends from St. Scholastica’s College, Manila in August, a Children and Youth Cantata in September, and a two-day evangelistic crusade in October.  

Last June,  “Church Among the Palms — Serving the Community, the Nations and the World,” a book on CAP history penned  by Dr. Ben Vergara, was launched.

Forthcoming activities include a general assembly of retired UCCP church workers in the Philippines and homecoming  of CAP members and residents and CSI alumni in November, and a  choral festival and medical mission next month.

Former President Fidel V. Ramos will be the speaker at the anniversary worship service this coming Sunday. Also scheduled are the unveiling of the historical marker of the old sanctuary, and dedication of the new sanctuary.

The Christian School International (CSI), an outreach ministry of CAP will offer a Festival of Talents featuring its talented faculty  and students in music and the arts.

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Jazz specialists are agog over the talent of stride, ragtime and jazz pianist  Fil-American Stephanie Trick.

One says the 25-year-old “has come to practically dominate the stride piano field.”

Another one writes: “I don’t know how one acquire such things, but from the very first bars of hearing her play, you can tell this is one serious believer, a true and faithful Harem stride pianist. There’s something about the feel, the way the beat comes out, the directness of attack, the certainty and assuredness (not to mention accuracy) in Steph’s playing that leaves you thinking you’re in a speakeasy on 13th street.”

 Still another describes her as having “won the esteem of specialists in the genre with wonderful interpretations of stride classics, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, and Don Lambert… She plays the pieces with a punch that is matched by her precise interpretation.”

Stephanie describes stride playing thus: “Stride was developed in the 1920s and kind of sounds like a whole band is performing. The left hand makes the sound of the bass by hitting low notes, thereby creating a very full sound.”

Stephanie is one of the few female pianists to command mastery of the demanding stride jazz piano style. She was the 2012 recipient of the prestigious Kobe-Beda Jazz Friendship Award. She has performed throughout the United States and in Europe, including the International Stride and Swing Summit in Boswil, Switzerland, the Breda Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, the Sacramento Music Festival, and the Cincy Blues Fest in Cincinnati. This year, she performed in different jazz, ragtime, boogie woogie festivals. Recently, she and her husband, also a jazz performer, played for Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall at Tron Kirk, a 17th–century church, in Scotland.

I haven’t met Stephanie in person, but talked with her mother, Aline Trick, who came to  visit with her sister,  Violeta Garcia, who lives in Baryo Kapitolyo, Pasig. Aline gave me a number of her daughter’s recordings, which I listened to delightedly, rapping my feet and fingers, and dancing the boogie in the living room. Her video recordings show her as a lovely young woman, who plays spiritedly, with obvious love for stride. She should play in the Philippines, I told Aline, a Christian Science Monitor nursing graduate.

Aline said Stephanie, her only child with the late physicist Allan Trick, was five when she heard for the first time a woman playing the piano at a restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri in 1992.  The awed little girl was introduced to the pianist who became her  teacher for the next 13 years. Stephanie, her teacher said, was “the most dedicated student I ever had. She would never let anything go without fully understanding it first.” Aline remembers that at a young age, Stephanie decided to wake up at 5 in the morning to practice before going to school.

At the age of 10 Stephanie was introduced to ragtime, and starting as a junior  at Principia High School, she took first place  for three years in the St. Louis Friends of Scott Joplin competition. She attended the University of Chicago where she studied Baroque and the Romantic and Classical styles and graduated in 2009 with a bachelor of Arts in music  along with Phi Beta Kappa academic honors.

A fan took a video of her performing Jelly Roll Morton’s Finger Breaker at the 2007 West Coast Ragtime Festival and posted it on You Tube. Someone from Switzerland saw it and invited her to the 2008 Stride & Swing Summit in Boswil (her first overseas trip) where she played with some of the world’s best stride musicians.

It was at Boswil that she met another jazz player, Paolo Alderighi. They met several times at concerts in Europe, and finally tied the knot two years ago. Videos show them to be a handsome couple.  Paolo received his degree in piano from the  Verdi Conservatory of Milan in 2000 and a degree in economics for arts, culture and media from Bocconi University in 2005. He has received prizes for jazz performances in Europe, Japan, Spain, Morocco, and the UK.

Steph and Paolo  perform together as a four-hands jazz piano duo dedicated to playing the songs of the Swing Era, along with some ragtime and blues.  Their styles differ (Paolo focuses on the music of Erroll Garner, Earl  Hines and Teddy Wilson) and Stephanie on Fats Waller, James P. Johnson and Albert Ammons, but,  according to Steph’s communication, although it was not easy as jazz musicians to playing four hands on one piano without being redundant or interfering with each other’s playing, it was natural to find common ground and exciting to write arrangements  that suit their sound as a duo.

The couple plans to spend Christmas next year in the Philippines. The local music specialists should invite them to play. (Contact Stephanie at www.stephanietrick.com )

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