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SSAA-East Coast Celebrates SSC School of Music Centennial
with Manhattan Concert

Posted: Monday April 28, 2008 01:41 PM

Those Talented Scholasticans
by Clarissa (Mike) Palileo

From the Spring Street subway station I ambled along the sidewalk cafes of Mulberry Street in Little Italy—ambling because it was 1:30 on a warm Sunday afternoon and the concert was a good hour away. I could see Chinatown a couple of blocks away bustling with fish vendors. Actually I could smell Chinatown from where I was on Broome Street. Stopping to peruse a vendor’s box of snails I winced and asked myself, “How can one EAT those things?” before moving on.

The Chapel of San Lorenzo Ruiz sits on the outskirts of trendy Soho, at 378 Broome to be exact, between Mulberry and Mott. The chapel is squeezed between two taller buildings and looks like a letter “I” – small, narrow, thin, and white. Inside, the chapel is modern and spare, its whitewashed walls in contrast to the rows of brown wooden pews. One’s eyes move upward to the latticed trellises on the walls by the altar, a vase of white orchids fronting each. The statue of San Lorenzo Ruiz, prominently displayed beside the vase on the upper right wall is the only icon besides a crucifix hanging almost magically from an invisible string in the middle of the altar.

It seems an unlikely venue for a concert, because Lincoln Center it is not. But when the chapel started filling up closer to 2:30 p.m., the Chapel of San Lorenzo Ruiz was filled with the excitement and sophistication and aplomb of a regular concert hall. To me it seemed the concertgoers at this concert seemed even more poised and self-assured than the regular aficionados and culture vultures at Lincoln Center. But maybe because I knew them all—those spirited Scholastican New Yorkers and their families, out en masse on a Sunday afternoon to SUPPORT A SCHOLAR.

One by one they performed, THOSE TALENTED SCHOLASTICANS: soprano Ruby Topacio-Bernales, surprising us with her beautiful voice in an initial offering “Ako’y Pilipino;” banduria player Leonor Llorin-Paliguin and guitarist Michael Dadap (SSC music faculty) harmonizing in a sweet duet; pianist Mimi Diaz-Bonarti with Leonor this time on the violin; guitarist Michael Dadap transporting us to Manila, Cebu, and other tropical Philippine isles in four guitar solos, and then Michael again accompanying Ruby in a Visayan song. And impressing us in between (and “breaking the mood,” Jay said), those two young TALENTED CHILDREN of Scholasticans, singer Jay Legaspi (I couldn’t help feeling how proud Leo and Marita must have been) and even younger John Montemayor on the piano.

“I was transported to the Philippines,” I said to a friend after the concert, then broke down with Corito and Cecile Bunag as we hugged, remembering their late mother Mrs. Lydia Larracas-Bunag who had taught piano to Ruby and Mimi. I looked around; no one seemed to want to leave. I wondered if their hearts were bursting with pride at being Filipino and Scholastican, just as mine was. Reluctantly I picked up my belongings and headed for the chapel door, but not before buying a CD of Michael Dadap’s love songs at the exit. It had been a fine afternoon. And we even supported a scholar.

SSAA-MANHATTAN CONCERT PERFORMERS. Top row, from left to right: Maria Leonor Llorin-Paliguin (violinist/banduria player) with Michael Dadap (guitarist/composer); parents Leo and Marita Legaspi with singer/composer Jay Legaspi; alumnae Leonor Paliguin, Corito Bunag, Dingding Quintos-Cortez, Michael Dadap, Cecile Bunag-Lowlicht, and singer/pianist Ruby Topacio-Bernales. Bottom row, left to right: concert friends, pianist John Montemayor, and soprano Ruby Topacio-Bernales. Photo taken by Joann Lara (HS ’65).

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