Charisse Baldoria to give piano concert at UP
International prizewinning pianist and University of the Philippines alumna Charisse Baldoria will give a solo piano recital at the UP College of Music Minihall on May 17, Tuesday, at 6:30 p.m.
Titled Musical Crossroads, it features music inspired by Southeast Asia, Spain and Argentina, whose influences come together in the music of the Philippines.
National Artist Ramón Santos’ Gong- An suite is the program’s pièce de résistance. Inspired by gong cultures in northern and southern Philippines, it evokes the Mindanao kulintang and Cordillera gangsa, drawing upon the piano’s sonorities as it makes unusual technical and musical demands on the pianist.
Also in the program is music inspired by the Javanese and Balinese gamelan (gong-chime ensemble), with works by Debussy, Godowsky, and New Zealand composer Gareth Farr; as well as pieces from Albéniz’ Iberia, Argentine tangos by Piazzolla, and Mayón by Francisco Buencamino.
Charisse, a former Fulbright scholar who got her doctorate from the University of Michigan and is now a piano professor at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, has presented lecture- recitals and performances of Santos’ works in various places around the world, from Buenos Aires to Boston to Helsinki, and recorded it for her latest CD Gamelan on Piano.
“I have a strong fascination with Southeast Asian culture, and as Filipino, I feel like both an outsider and an insider,” she says. “I feel a sense of exoticism, as well as a desire to go back to our roots. Ramón Santos has done a lifetime of tremendous work with this, and I feel a great affinity with his art.”
Future projects include performing and publishing editions of works by Southeast Asian composers.
A piano professor at the University of the Philippines from 2006-2008 during her Fulbright home residence requirement, Baldoria took the opportunity to travel around Southeast Asia, performing and traveling around Myanmar during the monks’ Saffron Revolution of 2007 and accidentally meeting a Lao prince on a trip from Luang Prabang to Chiang Mai, among other adventures.
“My Southeast Asian explorations are of a cultural and personal nature,” she quips. Fascinated by the music of Spain and Argentina as well, she has traveled in these countries and cites their intersections with Philippine culture, recording this music in her highly acclaimed CD Evocación.
Prizewinner of the San Antonio International Piano Competition, Charisse was also twice first-prize winner of the Philippines’ National Music Competition for Young Artists (NAMCYA) and has performed in five continents.
She studied with the late Filipino pedagogue Nita Abrogar-Quinto and with Logan Skelton at Michigan.
For more information, call the UP College of Music at 926-0026.