Program

A Filipino in New York (2023)
IV. nasubli ng tren
V. O Mutya

Ignace Jang, violin
Morgan Chan, violin
Tyler Katsura, viola
Jun Yi Chow, cello

Strait Lines (2024)

Ronald Querian, kulintang
Sienna Sonoda, viola
Bryson Clearing Sky, piano

Restart (2023)

Kouhei Takakura, tenor saxophone Gustavo D'Amico, tenor saxophone

Made Different (2023)

Paul Gabriel L. Cosme, kulintang
Juven Niño Villacastin, violin
Marcus Moore, bass clarinet

Scenes from Within (2023)

Kenny Endo, taiko set
Christopher Blasdel, shakuhachi
Morgan Chan, violin

Song of the Wanderer (2023)

Aubrey Aikens, soprano
Morgan Chan, violin
Denny Landika, electric guitar
Peter Meyer, bass guitar
Kevin Calamayan, glockenspiel
Tevin Takata, drumset
Benny Dugay Jr, piano

Notes from the Composer

A Filipino in New York

New York is a place that many Filipinos aspire to live in. It is a place that represents fulfillment of dreams, but it is also a place ridden with hardships and challenges. I wrote this piece while I was staying in New York, where I met many Filipino workers and immigrants from whom I had the chance to hear their experiences—from beautiful to heart-wrenching stories. A Filipino in New York is about them: a montage about immigration, hope, and tragedy. Each movement speaks to various sentiments I heard from Filipino immigrants while incorporating both the soundscapes of where I met them and elements from Philippine traditional musics and dances.

Strait Lines

This piece plays with the idea of a Maguindanaoan kulintang “genre,” tidtu, which means “to make straight” and various meanings of “strai(gh)t: lines, the body of water that connects seas, stressful, narrow. The music exhibits various rhythms and lines by beginning emulating the kulintangan but later also illustrating elements of Western counterpoint. It is my way of combining two things I enjoy: the complex groove in tidtu and the wonders of counterpoint.

Restart

I wrote Restart during a trip in Chicago while visiting close friends and family. During this time, as we drove around, our car would stop, never start, and needed to be jump-started most times. Luckily there would always be nice people around to help us jump-start the car. At the same time, I was staying with close family-friends who are jazz musicians from the Philippines. I was surrounded by the music that they always like to listen and play. This piece contains those little fragments, experiences, and memories. One can find the two saxophones hocketing motifs, always restarting themes, catching up with each other, and just having fun.

Made Different

One of the main ‘genres’ of the kulintangan is binalig which roughly translates to “made different.” It embodies changes in kulintang music, but it also refers to rhythmic modes that the ensemble improvises on. While this piece is inspired by binalig, it does not utilize these rhythms but instead riffs on the playful nature of the mode with surprises in time and volume. The trio then embodies “play” itself by improvising towards the ending, giving the performers to show their own personality and “play” on the piece as it is continually made different.

Scenes from Within

In Japanese Noh aesthetics, the ineffable concept of yūgen (幽玄) “entails mystery, darkness, and depth,” and it “treats natural scenes with no conspicuous or predictably beautiful focus of attention but with the promise of emotional depth and far-reaching associations and allusions.”

This piece seeks to explore what I understand yūgen to be and the historical contradictions that my chosen instruments have. The shakuhachi, a bamboo flute, was used as a spiritual tool for meditation but also as a tool for violence and favored by the samurai. The taiko is used to evoke the supernatural, but as well as worldly nature. The violin may have initially imitated the sound of the voice but can also evoke ethereal soundscapes. The taiko utilizes its modified traditional patterns while the shakuhachi and violin play and exchange each of their own idiomatic gestures as part of a dynamic and meditative interchange.

Song of the Wanderer

Song of the Wanderer explores what it means to repeatedly lose and regain one’s sense of home by bringing together wildly different sound worlds. The piece intertwines the conventions of the Filipino art song, kundiman, with various popular band genres notably punk rock and metal. I thought that combining these two seemingly opposite sound worlds allowed me to express the often-polarized feelings I have about leaving home and returning quite estranged, not knowing if it was I who changed, my country, or both. I borrowed text from the Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal, who studied overseas and thought about these same questions.

About the Composer

Filipino composer/scholar Paul Gabriel L. Cosme (b. 2000) blends and breaks boundaries in his constant search for home. He combines various media, forms, and sound worlds from Asian and Western traditions with classical, pop & rock, jazz, and traditional artists from the United States and throughout Asia and the Pacific including the GRAMMY-nominated JACK Quartet, taiko master Kenny Endo, shakuhachi player Christopher Blasdel, kulintang player Ronald Querian “kulintronica,” Gugak musicians from Seoul National University, the BIPOC-centered Sugar Hill Salon Collective in New York, and many musicians he considers his dear friends. Paul currently studies composition as a master’s student at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa as a Graduate Degree Fellow at the East-West Center where he also researches national constructions of the Philippines through contemporary and popular music. A winner of the Lila Bell Acheson Wallace Endowed Prize in Music, Paul graduated, summa cum laude, from Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota where he majored in Music and International Studies. His teachers include Randy Bauer, Victoria Malawey, Donald Reid Womack, Takuma Itoh, and Thomas Osborne.