Musical genius in the high seas

This flame in my heart, and a long lost friend,

Gives every dark street a light at the end.

For eight years, we heard his clear tenor singing the theme of ABC’s sitcom Perfect Strangers (1985-1993), the heavy drums in the score jolting us out of the doldrums of a post Marcos era. The theme song (by Jesse Frederick and Bennett Salvay) running a minute was prophetic for the genius who sang it, particularly its title Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now.  This Long Island, New York boy who sang duets with his father in their orthodox synagogue has been composing since he was nine, and has not stopped making wonderful music ever since.

In the jam-packed Lido Theatre of the Star Cruises’ luxury ship Superstar Virgo sailing the high seas of South East Asia, David Pomeranz sang with the flame in his heart all aglow with every note and acknowledged his long lost friend, the Filipinos who welcomed him to their lives in the mid-‘80s in his spiels. We can only thank personal friend Raymund Tee of Horizons Travel for ensuring that we got on board even at the last minute to watch Pomeranz’s s magical night of  music live.

His curtain raiser was Got to Believe in Magic (Charles Fox/Stephen Geyer) from the movie Zapped. The multi-awarded singer, who like his biblical namesake, is relatively short in stature but strikingly simpatico in a mystifying way, entered in his formal suit and made the hair at the back of everyone’s neck (Indians, Malaysians, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese and Filipinos) stand. He followed it up with If You Walked Away (David Pomeranz) which he reminisced he wrote as a young lad and which, became a monster hit in the Philippines because he recorded it in recent times with the megastar Sharon Cuneta.

While he acknowledged all the nationalities in the audience, he made special mention of the Filipinos, who after all made the concert possible, particularly the show’s producers, Ultimate Entertainment and sponsors Chowking, PAGCOR and MyPhone. In earnest salutation, he justified this affinity, saying: “The Jewish people and the Filipinos both stress education and family in their lives.” He poked fun at the Pinoy’s uncanny ability to use parts of his facial anatomy to communicate, particularly his eyebrows and nguso to answer questions, which made the audience roar with approval.

In an interview by Dan Kimpel for Music Connection Magazine, David called Pinoys “a very sweet, sentimental people.” But what is more moving is his confession of what he did in the mid-’80s when he was first invited to do a concert in the Philippines: “I did a show and left, and in typical, arrogant American fashion, said: ”They’re sweet; that was nice” and went back to whatever project I was doing. Several years later I realized I’d messed up: a country of 82 million people had opened their arms and said, come in.” He then referred to this as serendipity—“one of the things in my life I didn’t try for that happened.”

But David has since made up for that initial lapse, and considered the Philippines his second home, where he records his albums and jams with his favorite home-grown musicians like Louie Ocampo, Lea Salonga, Zsa Zsa Padilla, Lani Misalucha, Vernie Varga, Regine Velasquez and others who have also conquered other parts of the world, particularly the US. “I consider myself an adopted son of the Philippines and returns regularly,” he proudly shares, easing the sting of the recent Terry Hatcher slur from my favorite, Desperate Housewives.

He also sang his Barry Manilow goldies Trying to Get the Feeling Again and The Old Songs. The first, he recollected, was a song  he thought won’t ever come out right. He first sent the initial verses to the Carpenters, but when it reached  Manilow, he was told it was perfect as it is. True enough, it became one of Manilow’s all time hits. When he took off his suit because he was sweating and crooned Born For You, (David Pomeranz/David Zippel) he brought the house down. This solo compact disc (CD) produced by MCA Universal Asia in 1999 has become the unofficial anthem of Filipino weddings and anniversary celebrations. The sentiment is so Filipino: I was born for you, it is written in the stars… We could hear our eldest son Nomer and the whole assembly singing with him, thinking of their significant others somewhere far away.

From the off Broadway musical The Tramp, which David wrote on the life of his childhood hero (whom he mimicked at age nine) — Charlie Chaplin— came the song This is what I Dreamed. If under those same magic skies You were closing your eyes and dreaming of this moment with me, My life is wide awake now… As a composer-singer who claims he “lives for gorgeous melody,” David holds his dreams in the palm of his hands. From the starry-eyed long-haired rock and roller who first toured the US as front act for big tin pan alley names like Rod Stewart, Billy Joel, Three Dog Night and the Doors, to the sedate, wise-with-the-years collaborator of Broadway and West End musicals, he has come a long way. Tucked in his belt is a 1981 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Achievement in music and lyrics for the CBS television movie Homeward Bound, and cramming his walls are 22 platinum and 18 gold album recognitions from the music industry.

At the lounge of the titanic luxury liner, while his fans queued for photo ops and this interview was being rushed, he proudly answered  the query on who the wind beneath his wings is: “My parents.” They surrounded him with music through his growing years as manifestation of their devotion to nourish his soul. They could not have chosen a better name for him, because in Hebrew, David means “beloved”. Seeing the sea of multi-ethnic faces savoring every note of his sweet melodies, it is evident that his parents’ sheltering love has beaten a path to the door of the world that adulates him now.

As the lyrics of his ballad Undying Admiration prophecies: All my life I’ve waited for the kind of love Keats and Shelley would be jealous of…”, David has found this kind of love — from his family, his admirers, in fact from all those who hearken to his priceless gift: the poetry of the soul, the “cry” of the spirit and the beat of a heart in ecstasy — Pomeranz’s music.