Master guitarist Michael Dadap will hold a concert with Kwerdas, Silliman University’s premier rondalla group, on 4 August 2012, Saturday, at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium, Dumaguete City. The concert, titled “One/String,” is one of the highlights of the 50th Cultural Season of the Silliman Cultural Affairs Committee.
Maestro Dadap is a soloist and chamber music performer, a composer, and conductor. An accomplished classical guitarist, Dadap has recorded six CD Albums for the classical guitar, including Intimate Guitar Classics for solo guitar which was the featured album in February 1990 on the New York Times classical radio station, WQXR.
Dadap also gives regular chamber music concerts with the Dadap-Ma Duo (with wife, the cellist Yeou Cheng Ma), which has performed in the United States, Asia, and Europe.
Dadap has dedicated a large portion of his career to the appreciation of Filipino folk music, pioneering the awareness of the Philippine rondalla in the United States. He is the founding music director of the Iskwelahang Pilipino Rondalla of Boston Massachusetts.
His first published book, A Complete Method for the Virtuoso Bandurria, is now widely used among folkloric Instrumental Ensembles in the Philippines and in the United States.
Currently, he is working on his second book, The Evolving Instruments of the Rondalla.
Kwerdas, which was founded in 1999, began as an ad hoc rondalla group with the sole purpose of performing the Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5 by Heitor Villalobos for one of the soprano students of ethnomusicologist Priscilla Magdamo-Abraham.
Primarily composed of music students from Silliman who believed in the rondalla’s unlimited potential and diversity, Kwerdas eventually went on to do local and international performances as guest artists or featured performers.
Most notably, the group participated in the Asian-Caribbean Festival in Miami, Florida, and was a mainstay act for the 1st and 2nd International Rondalla and Pluck String Festival of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
Since its humble beginnings, Kwerdas has emerged to be one of the most creative and entertaining rondalla ensembles in the country today.
While most of its members have since finished their music studies in Silliman, they still come together for performances to keep the rondalla tradition alive.
Theater passes are available for both the 3 pm matinee, and the 8 pm gala. All tickets and season passes for Luce Auditorium shows are available for sale at the College of Performing & Visual Arts, and at the theater lobby before the show begins. For ticket reservations and other inquiries, call (035) 422-4365 or 0917-513-3312. (Ian Rosales Casocot/CAC)
