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Unravelling the CCP FAS
Unravelling the CCP FAS Box
Office Champ --- and flop
Posted: 7:32 PM (Manila Time) | July 15, 2001
By Pablo Tariman
Inquirer News Service
THIS weekend, as pianists Ingrid Sala Santamaria and Reynaldo Reyes brace for
their Northern Luzon debut in Ilagan, Isabela on Sunday for an evening of Grieg
and Tchaikovsy concertos, I am also briefed about the coming CCP outreach
concerts of baritone Jonathan Zaens and cellist Willy Pasamba along with pianist
Mariel Ilusorio, violinist Gina Medina and flutist Antonio Maigue in the
Southern provinces.
It is a coincidence that while I was seated with CCP artistic director Corazon
Inigo and Performing Arts head Dennis Marasigan and with CCP’s ex-employee
Della Besa lingering on the other table, soprano Kit Viguilla, who will close
the Filipino Artists Series (FAS) season in November, chose to sing Mozart’s
Vengeance Aria (from Magic Flute) and delivered those stratospheric notes with
relish and boy, they were clear as a bell.
Other artists in the FAS series also gave a sampling from their instrument (Pasamba,
a Bach Prelude; Gina Medina, a Brahms Schetzo; Ilusorio – a Liszt-Paganini
keyboard dazzler), all of which elicited positive nodding from the media.
So what are the merits of this series and its inherent weaknesses (Marasigan
asked me what reward or satisfaction I got after 15 years of covering the FAS
concerts and must say that the rewards are few and in between and so are the
excitement)?
Merits and weaknesses
The merit (or perks) of this series is that Filipino artists get free venue,
free poster and free ticket printing on top of free marketing and with modest
fees to boot (most of the time, they don’t even cover cost of air tickets if
the artists came from abroad). As for its weaknesses, I guess the basic one is
that CCP has to improve its marketing and promotions as shown in the dismal
audience count in the last five years of the series (To illustrate, Oscar Yatco
and Nena Villanueva were only heard by 110 people in 1996 and only 29 of that
number actually bought tickets.). But lo and behold! Jonathan Zaens in the year
2000 is box-office champion with 334 in the audience (out of 400 Little Theater
seats. In my book, Zaens was also the most exciting in the batch).
If it is any consolation, the number of FAS subscribers rose from 10 (in 1996)
to 49 (in 1997) to 80 (in 1998) to 104 (in 1999) and to 121 as of last year.
Whether these subscribers actually watch concerts or were persuaded to buy, is
another story.