I don’t normally write about music because I am not as much of an aficionado as music bloggers out there. I also don’t really have a diverse range of artists I listen to. But when I do listen to an artist, you can bet I have listened to most of their back catalogue of songs and would love to see them perform live.
Coldplay is one of those bands I’ve listened to over the years. While I can’t say I’ve grown up with their music (I was already in my late teens when they broke out with their album “Parachutes”), their songs were the soundtrack to much of my adult life. So when they finally announced dates for the Asian leg of their “A Head Full of Dreams” tour, I knew I had to get on the ticket train.
In the same vein that I listen just to music, I don’t follow music industry news nor gossip columns — which is why I failed to pick up on the fact that “A Head Full of Dreams” is said to be Coldplay’s last album and this could be the last time the band goes on tour. This, aside from the Coldplay drought in the region for so many years, has driven demand for tickets sky-high. Read more →
Ahh, Christmas in the Philippines. The time of good holiday cheer, spending time with loved ones and those you haven’t seen in a while, braving the increased traffic to get to the malls to finish gift shopping — all done to the ubiquitous sounds of Jose Mari Chan’s Christmas album. You know what I mean.
I never actually knew where Jose Mari Chan got those songs he covered in that album, so you can imagine my surprise when I sat down to the press preview of Scrooge The Musical at OnStage Greenbelt a few weeks ago, and the ensemble cast opened with the song “A Christmas Carol”.
As the musical unfolded, it showed Ebenezer Scrooge’s miserly treatment of all the people around him, including himself, the spooky haunting of Scrooge by his departed business partner Marley, and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future helping Scrooge see the error of his ways. The cast, led by Miguel Faustmann as Scrooge, was amazing and on point, and while the sound mixing still had kinks to be ironed out (Miguel’s mic didn’t seem to be catching a lot of sound), the OnStage theater was small enough for their voices to carry through.
My familiarity with most of the songs helped me hear them with new ears. They are so overplayed from September through December and thus lose their meaning, but within the framework of the musical they are re-imbued with their magic and also bring back memories of wonderful Christmases past.
I have always been accustomed to seeing A Christmas Carol as a non-musical film or TV special aired during Christmas time — I can still remember very vividly Bill Murray’s Scrooge film. I didn’t know that it was a musical, with book, music, and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. Being the cultural illiterate I am, the first time I heard of Scrooge The Musical was when Repertory Philippines sent me a press release about them staging it this time of year (more specifically, November 21 to December 14). When they offered tickets to the press preview, I jumped at the chance.
This is the fourth time Repertory Philippines has staged an adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The story follows the miserly life of banker Ebenezer Scrooge and his journey towards realizing the true spirit of Christmas through three ghosts: that of his past, present, and future.
In my life I have only ever been to about ten plays, but I’ve never seen one with full production values. Scrooge The Musical takes you into the Victorian England setting from the book, with sets swiftly transforming from exteriors to interiors, from the street marketplace into an office, from the outside of Scrooge’s house into his living room and bedroom. As an adult I found myself marveling at the stagecraft. I can imagine the kids in the audience asking their moms and dad excitedly, “How did they do that?!”
This is the last weekend for Scrooge The Musical at OnStage Greenbelt. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend you do! Today’s matinee performance is already sold out. You can purchase Scrooge tickets via Ticketworld.
While Scrooge can be very entertaining, I think it also reminds us that Christmas shouldn’t be about material things. Rather, the giving of gifts should be from the overflow of gratitude and thankfulness in our hearts as we remember the Reason for the season. (It isn’t called “Christ-mas” for nothing.)
I’ve not been one to go for nightlife or the local music scene lately simply because I’m a morning person, a somewhat serious athlete, and there’s something about going to a dingy smoky bar late at night just to watch a band perform that makes my asthmatic throat constrict.
12 Monkeys Music Hall & Pub at Century City Mall, Makati aims to change that attitude, and from my visit there last Friday I think it might actually work. 🙂
12 Monkeys is on the 5th Level
fully-stocked bar
for the live acts
for the DJs
This music hall and pub was set up by the who’s who of Manila’s music, social, and F&B scene. Read more →
In the grand scheme of things Les Mills, the Philippines hasn’t been a major player. I’ve been instructing for about six years now; up until recently only one gym chain had acquired the license to use Les Mills group exercise programs in their clubs. We were blessed that we had Arnold Warren, a program coach for BODYJAM in Southeast Asia, residing in the Philippines, and twice a year we’d hold our own workshops and invited trainers from the region. At least we didn’t stagnate, but not much was happening with us beyond purchasing the new releases with new choreography and music on DVD every quarter.
Then the advanced instructor modules were introduced, and for long-time instructors like myself it brought us back to why we had started teaching in the first place: because of our passion for these programs that had brought about so much change for the better in our own lives.
We had our first official Les Mills metro workshop in the last quarter of 2012, which made us feel more connected to the whole network of Les Mills events in the region. So a large number of us decided to make the trip to Kuala Lumpur for the Ultimate Super Workshop happening on February 16-17, 2013. It would be the only official workshop held for the first quarter of the year (we have workshops quarterly) and it was an opportunity to represent the Philippines among the other Southeast Asian nations. Read more →
As a kid I loved visiting museums during field trips. They were an occasional treat to feed our creativity and our minds.
One of my school’s favorite haunts was the old Ayala Museum, which had a permanent exhibit about Philippine history (loved the dioramas!). During my university Spanish class our professor required us to visit the Metropolitan Museum, which had an exhibit on Spanish artifacts found in the Philippines.
At the Met Gala 2013, I encountered a different Metropolitan Museum. Read more →
This month it seems the cartoons I watched in my childhood are coming back around. I’m impatiently waiting for the Jem and the Holograms DVD box set I ordered from Amazon. I just watched the live action adaptation of Rurouni Kenshin. And this Saturday, I’m attending the Superbook Reimagined Family Fun Day!
If you never watched Sunday morning cartoons on GMA7 back in the late 1980’s you might not remember what Superbookis. Let me refresh your memory.
Back when Mercato Centrale first opened near Bonifacio High Street in 2010 for its Morning Mercato market, I would drop by on Sundays after a race for some food and drink. I was already familiar with the concept of weekend markets where fresh food and produce were offered, since my family and I frequented the one that used to be held at the Lung Center of the Philippines compound on Quezon Avenue. Still, the charm of each weekend market is the variety; they don’t all have the same concessionaires, so you could have a completely different food and shopping experience from one market to another.
organic produce fresh off the farm
Today, Morning Mercato re-opened in its original location at the corner of 30th Street and 9th Avenue in BGC. It’ll be there on Saturdays and Sundays from 7am to 2pm through November and December. (Midnight Mercato will still be held at the Mercato tent near Turf BGC.) Read more →
I rarely get invited to beauty events these days, mostly because I rarely blog about makeup and skin care now. It was nice receiving an invite from Garnier to attend their Get Active Campus Challenge culminating event at Enderun Colleges a few weeks ago. The event was only very obliquely about Garnier’s line of skin care products. Rather, the Get Active Campus Challenge sponsored youth groups from nine schools in the country to create and run campaigns for a variety of advocacies: health and wellness, community development, the environment, women empowerment and more.
Garnier beauty advocate Georgina Wilson with student representatives and event host Atom Araullo
The brand’s tagline “Take Care” was expanded to mean not just take care of oneself, but also of others in the community and groups in need.
Congratulations to the University of Mindanao on winning the grand prize of P100,000 for their Small Spaces, Big Returns urban container gardening campaign. Their project educated NSTP students and communities on using small urban spaces for sustainable gardening. According to the UM organizers, one community has now begun an income-generating seedling nursery based on what they learned.
[instagram url=http://instagr.am/p/Q7IcrrhZB2/ size=medium addlink=yes] photo from Garnier’s Instagram account
It’s great seeing a skin care brand branch out into community service. I just checked their Facebook page and learned that every time you buy a Garnier product at Mercury Drug outlets, part of what you pay goes to World Vision, which funds education for children in need. Now that’s how you “Take Care.”
I don’t always listen to the radio these days. Too much painful pop music (or is it a sign of old age that I don’t enjoy what the young ‘uns are into?). However, I make exception for danceable tunes that make me want to shake my booty!
Well, guess whose booty graced Manila last week?
Pink Friday with a Pink Booty
Thanks to Globe and BlackBerry, Nicki’s Pink Friday World Tour made a stop in Manila. Concert tickets were for free and exclusive to Globe subscribers who availed of the new BlackBerry Curve 9220 or 9320 smartphones under the Globe My Super Plans.
Nicki Minaj
As a Globe Mobile Data Services Ambassador, I got floor tickets to see the concert. I was almost put off from going because of heavy traffic, but I’m glad I toughed it out and made it to SM Mall of Asia Arena just in time for the opening act, Q-York (Philippine All-Stars). Then there was another long break during which I got something to eat (traffic makes me hungry). Then the screams from inside the arena alerted me that Nicki was onstage!
Nicki and her band of dancers
I enjoyed the visual spectacle, from Nicki’s bright ensembles, to her tour dancers, to the LED screens she used to transform the stage look. Her blistering fast raps were live and I could hear teen audience members rapping along behind me.
yet another costume change
She sang most of her vocals, but as what she often does on TV appearances, part of the vocals were on a backing track (especially the vocals with distortion — chipmunked, echoed and repeated). I don’t blame her for it, as she needed lots of physical energy to run all over the stage. Between costume changes, her DJ would play some of her songs that were collaborations with other artists, including my favorite “Fly” with Rihanna.
At one point during the concert, she asked some front-row fans, including one girl from Q-York, to come up on stage and dance with her.
say cheese!
Despite the short length of the show (well, compared with the amount of time I spent in traffic getting to the venue), Nicki appeared touched by her Filipino fans’ response to her performance. She said, “I’ll never forget you. You’ll always be in my heart as the first time I’ve ever come here.”
<3
Nicki ended the concert with “Super Bass”, still her most identifiable song on these shores.
an explosion of confetti
But Filipinos weren’t done with her. We kept chanting, “We want more! We want more!” There wasn’t more though, but Nicki ran out onstage to wave at us again.
I think manila had the loudest encore screams I’ve ever heard! “WE WANT MORE, WE WANT MORE!!!!” So I ran bak out in my new pink robe! Ha!
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