Celebrating the Jazz Life

MANILA, Philippines - Not too many local artists sing jazz. So when artists come together, albeit rarely, to propagate jazz, the event is certainly something to look forward to among music, particularly jazz, enthusiasts.

Tonight and on July 26, jazz greats will perform in a concert, The Jazz Life, at RJ Bistro at Dusit Thani Hotel in Makati City. Featured artists are singers Emcy Corteza, Richard Merk and lawyer Ferdie Topacio with The Jazz Band — pianist Niki Cabardo, bassist Colby de la Calzada, guitarist Rudy Lozano, flutist/saxophonist Dix Lucero and drummer Mar Dizon.

Guitarist Rudy credits balladeer Basil Valdez for having started his career as a session musician. Basil urged Rudy to learn how to read notes. Rudy took a short course at the University of Sto. Tomas under Ernani Cuenco and at Sta. Isabel College under Betsy Basillo. Rudy played for every show that Basil did and later also produced albums for Basil.

Rudy started playing jazz when businessman Serafin Pua opened Birds of the Same Feather. Rudy together with Richard, Boy Katindig, and director Bert de Leon formed the Sticky Band. Their first recorded single was titled Sticky, with Black Boogie as the flip side, under Viva Records.

Bassist Colby started getting interested and learning about jazz when he was 20, with the band, Mother Earth. “We started listening to Chick Corea and the jazz/rock artists,” Colby shares. “Later, I joined Emil Mijares and he indoctrinated me to mainstream jazz. I’ve been playing and continuously learning jazz ever since.”

Drummer Mar started a trio with his classmates and auditioned at Enrico Hotel for a booking in Japan. “Prof. Pepe Metro was the one handling the auditions and he told us to play Satin Doll. Being a rock drummer fresh from the province, I was clueless and really had no idea about Satin Doll. My bandmates knew the song, so our pianist hummed the tune to me just to give me an idea.

“So after count off, I started playing very loud rock shuffle. The professor got irritated and told us to stop. He called an old drummer and told him to show me how to play Satin Doll. So after that experience, I stopped listening to other kinds of music and started listening only to jazz.”

Mar remembers an “unforgettable experience” when he represented the Philippines to the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague in Netherlands in 1994. “It was the biggest covered jazz festival, so the whole world was there. My hotel room was three rooms apart from Steve Gadd’s and we had breakfast and lunch together.”

Emcy was honed by her father, Archiebald Corteza, a jazz piano enthusiast, to listen to standard tunes like Stella by Starlight, Laura, Bluessette, Moonriver and many more.

“College days were all about music, hence jazz was a privilege singing with the UP Jazz Ensemble,” Emcy offers. “My first band (Four Play) did tunes from Cole Porter, Duke Ellington to Spyro Gyra. My solo stints were all about standard songs. That was followed by Blackbird Band singing fusion tunes of Seawind, Manhattan Transfer, Sergio Mendes, Patti Austin and many more. Jazz has been my life.”

Richard started singing jazz in Bangkok, Thailand when he was only 13. A chip off the old block, he was strongly influenced by his mom, Queen of Jazz Annie Brazil. Then, Richard started his jazz gigs at Birds of the Same Feather, which later became Birdland. He also sang at Vineyard.

“We will do jazz hits from the ‘50s to the ‘90s. Plus, the songs of Seawind, George Benson, Al Jarreau, Angela Bofill, Randy Crawford, Debra Laws, Diane Reeves and any more jazz giants,” Richard assures.