Encuentro Filipino: Speakers
Ma. Patricia Brillantes-Silvestre graduated in 1988 with a Bachelor of Music degree in Musicology, cum laude, and joined the faculty of the Musicology Department at the University of the Philippines College of Music a year later. She obtained a Master of Arts in Spanish, specializing in Translation, in 1998 from the UP College of Arts and Letters. She teaches Philippine music history courses (from the Pre-Colonal period to the American and Contemporary period) as well as Western music history courses (from Classical Greece to 20th-C. Music).
Her interests lie in the domain of Historical Musicology involving Philippine music in the Spanish Colonial Period and urban heritage studies. She has done research and fieldwork on the music of Quiapo, a district of Manila, and Intramuros, Manila's walled city; Philippine liturgical music; Philippine popular music and composers; translations and criticism of writings on music by early historians and scholars such as P. Pedro Murillo-Velarde, SJ, Manuel Walls y Merino and Pedro Paterno; and various folk music forms in the Spanish colonial period for the Philippine Program at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
She has written for the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Encyclopedia of Culture and the Arts (Music volume). Her essay Chronicles of Music in the Heart of Manila was published in the anthology Quiapo: Heart Of Manila, a multi-disciplinary volume on Quiapo (2006) and another essay Music and History in the Manila of Marcelo Adonay on the musical life of Manila in the milieu of the esteemed Filipino maestro de capilla of San Agustin Church in Intramuros (1848-1928) is currently in the press. She also has a number of research papers delivered in various symposia. She was formerly with the University of the Philippines Madrigal Singers, with which she has gone on a number of local and international concert tours; with AUIT, a vocal ensemble specializing in 20th-c Asian choral music and was formerly active as keyboardist and musical arranger for concerts as diverse as Philippine gong music fusion to musical theater. She is currently Board Member of the Philippine Musicological Society.
Ma. Alexandra IñIgo Chua has a Bachelor of Music in Piano, magna cum laude, from the University of Santo Tomas Conservatory of Music (1991) and a Master in Music major in Musicology from the University of the Philippines College of Music (2000). She is currently a faculty member of the UST Conservatory of Music teaching History of Music, Forms and Analysis, Philippine Music, Asian Music and Piano Performance. She served as Chair of the Music Literature Department from 2002-2007 of the said institution.
Professor Chua has done research on various aspects of music of the colonial Philippines, in particular the Hispanic music of the province of Bohol, 19th century sacred music of Manila and music during the Japanese occupation period. She is a recipient of research grants given by the Sumitomo Foundation, the Toward a Common Future: A Program for Cultural Cooperation between the Ministry of Education and Culture of Spain and Philippine Universities, University of the Philippines Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Development and the University of Santo Tomas Center for Intercultural Studies. She has presented papers in international conferences such as the European Philippine Studies Conference at Álcala de Henares, Spain (September 2001), the International Musicological Society of Japan Conference in Shizuoka, Japan, the Asian Studies Conference Japan in Tokyo, and the First Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology in Graz, Austria. She is also an Executive Council member of the Committee on Music of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, a government agency tasked to promote Filipino music culture nationally and internationally. She played a key role in organizing the Musicological Society of the Philippines which was established in 2002.
Elena Rivera Mirano is a Professor of Art Studies at the College of Arts and Letters at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. She has an A.B. in English, cum laude, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in Philippine Studies from the same university, as well as a Master of Arts in Humanities from Stanford University. As a researcher in the traditional culture of the Southern Tagalog region, She has authored Subli: One Dance in Four Voices/Subli: Isang Sayaw sa Apat na Tinig (National Book Award, Art Book Category, 1989) and Ang Mga Tradisyonal na Musikang Pantinig sa Lumang Bauan, Batangas (Gawad Chancellor, University of the Philippines, Diliman, "Best Book," Humanities Category, 1998). She served as research director for the Philippine Program at the 1998 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. She served as Project Director and Editor-in-Chief of The Life and Works of Marcelo Adonay, a research project jointly sponsored by the National Council for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the U.P. Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Development (UP-OVCRD). Volume I is to be launched by the U.P. Press in 2008.
In the domain of the performing arts, she was the featured performer of the recording album, Kumintang: Awitin ng mga Tagalog na taga Batangas, which she produced for the Diamond Jubilee of the University of the Philippines. A one woman show developed for the launch of this album was subsequently toured by the Cultural Center of the Philippines as part of its Outreach Program (November, 1986). As director of the Cherubim and Seraphim, the official children's choir of the University of the Philippines, she commissioned the theaterpiece, Awit ni Pulau, with music by Ramon P. Santos and libretto by Edgardo Maranan, serving as its producer. She also conceptualizes and directs the group's annual summer program of workshops and concert tours.
In 2001, she was designated laureate of the prestigious Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development in recognition of her achievements. In 2007, an Achievement Award in Humanities was conferred on her by the National Research Council of the Philippines.
Regalado Trota Jose: Over the past thirty years, Regalado Trota Jose has advocated for the study and protection of the cultural heritage of the Catholic Church in the Philippines. His studies at the University of the Philippines (A.B. Anthropology, 1978; M.A. Philippine Studies, 1991) were augmented by extensive travels around the country and the world (both through research grants and as a member of the Universit of the Philippines Madrigal Singers).
He has worked extensively - through research projects, curatorship of exhibits, convening of conferences, conducting of classes, and lecture presentations - with the Ayala Museum, the University of the Philippines, the University of Santo Tomas, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the Philippine National Historical Society, the Manila Archdiocesan Commission for the the Cultural Heritage of the Church, and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines Permanent Committee for the Cultural Heritage of the Church.
Jose's major published works include Simbahan: Church Art in Colonial Philippines 1565-1898 (1991; National Book Award, Art Category, 1992); two books on Philippine ivory images Images of Faith (1990) and Power + Faith + Image (2004, with Ramon N. Villegas); Impreso: Philippine Imprints 1593-1811 (1993); San Agustin: Art and History (2000, with Fr. Pedro Galende); and Visita Iglesia Bohol (2001). Jose embarked on two research trips to Spain to look for Philippine artifacts in the museums of that country. In 1999, Professor Jose received the Cultural Center of the Philippines Centennial Award for the Arts for work in art history, as one of "100 outstanding Filipinos who have helped build the Filipino nation through art and culture during the last 100 years."
Rev. Fr. Milan Ted D. Torralba is a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Tagbilaran, Bohol, The Philippines, and serves it in various capacities. He is presently Assistant Secretary in the Apostolic Nunciature (Embassy of the Holy See), in Manila, and Executive Secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, of the Catholic Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Manila. He is also a canon lawyer.
Fr. Torralba is very much involved in heritage administration, management, advocacy, having been chair of the Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church of the Diocese of Tagbilaran (1996-2005), and of the Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage Council (2002-2005), Provincial Government of Bohol, and sat in the the National Committee on Monuments & Sites, of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (1997-2004), Manila. He was responsible for a number of cultural heritage recovery projects in the Diocese of Tagbilaran as well as in the Province of Bohol which included organizing conferences, seminar-workshops and other such gatherings in the area of cultural heritage. He has presented results of his work in lectures both in the Philippines and abroad, and served as Philippine Government delegate to the ASEAN Ministers (ASEM) Meeting on Cultural Heritage held in Hanoi, Vietnam in February 1999, and to the Asia Pacific Hispanic Conference held in Madrid, Spain, in November 1999.
Fr. Torralba visited the Secretariat of State of the Holy See (Vatican City-State) in June 2002 to initiate the bilateral accord between the Holy See and the Republic of the Philippines on the care of the cultural heritage of the Catholic Church in the Philippines. The Agreement was signed in April 2007.