︎
Creative contributions in vocal performance 

1.   Improvised Chants


2.   Anam Cara (Trio Project)



TRANSITION ANXIETY

Improvised Vocals, 2021

A studio recording of my usual vocal improvisation, featuring production from Kyle Oppenheimer. This was a wedding gift I did for a friend, Hong Kong artist Wong Kit Yi. She had previously introduced me to Kyle for a work of hers, so I thought it'd be nice to have him on board. I sourced the title from something Ali had said in one of our conversations. Recorded on September 12 2021 at Chan Friend Studios, HK.




MORNING SONG

Improvised Vocals, 2021

A recorded snippet of my usual morning chant, which consists of improvised melodic and textual transcriptions of the moment. In this particular time-place—8:00 am, Monday March 29, 2021 in Kowloon—I sought to transcribe the quality of the sunlight (diffuse but clear) and passing sirens on an early Monday morning. Vocally, I approach these chant-sketches as slightly warped, drawn-out extensions of the drills I practice with my classical and Cantopop voice teachers.





Dito Mismo, Dito Muna
(Right Here, For Now)


Solo Spoken Word + Chant Piece
2017


Spoken word and chant piece from a Tagalog poem I wrote in Macao in November 2012, and performed live for the first time at the UP Vargas Museum in Manila, 06 August 2017.




To read an art studies module on this performance prepared by the UP Vargas Museum, click here.



twang / Hinabi (Interwoven)

Vocals for Short Film Score
2017/2019 

I met the sound and visual artist Pauline Vicencio-Despi through a performance project initiated by feminist sound art collective HERESY and Kamuning Public Radio, on the occasion of an all-female sound art performance for International Women’s Day in Manila. Since I couldn’t make it to the actual performance, I contributed a couple of vocal recordings based on requests from our collaborator, film composer Teresa Barrozo. Two years later, Pauline used one of my recordings to score ‘Hinabi’, an animated short that she co-produced with Ivan Despi, under their animation and design studio The Acid House.




Pause 2019 Motion Response - HINABI // The Acid House from Pause Fest on Vimeo.



Unearthing

Live Vocals for Contemporary Dance
2016

This is a recorded excerpt of a live scoring of the ‘sapi’  solo by dancer Zyda Baaya for the trance state dance piece ‘Unearthing’ by Daloy Dance Company, staged at the Cultural Center of the Philippines on 24 June 2016. Together with percussionist and kulintang player Tusa Montes, I developed semi-improvised chants in response to the piece, choreographed by Daloy artistic director Ea Torrado. The dancers for this 2016 iteration were Zyda Baaya, Buboy Raquitico, and Jomari Santos.