PHSA, Project Saysay Team Up for CASA San Miguel’s 24th Year

THE ever-dynamic CASA San Miguel. Image from Inquirer.net.

CASA San Miguel will open its 24th founding anniversary celebration as an arts center in San Antonio, Zambales with series of workshops, exhibits, and performances on March 25, 2017. With the theme “Hero in You(th)”, the anniversary revolves around the heroic role of the youth and the arts in shaping and building the nation, then and now.

CASA San Miguel partnered with Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA), the premiere secondary school of the country on arts and culture, and Project Saysay, a youth-led advocacy fostering the words of wisdom of great Filipinos through distribution of posters to various Philippine schools for free.

PHSA will conduct writing workshops with Rae Rival Cosico of PHSA on 25th March 2017.

Project Saysay will open its 3rd Tanghalbayani Exhibit featuring the new format of its 12”x18” standard posters—now made of matte-finished sticker on 3mm sintra board—in CASA San Miguel’s Don Salubayba Gallery at 5:00 p.m. on 25 March, Saturday. Philippine Historical Association Secretary Jonathan Balsamo will be the guest of honor of the said exhibit. It will be followed by the opening of PHSA’s Alay Exhibit in Anita Magsaysay-Ho Gallery at 5:30 p.m.

By 7 p.m. in Ramon L. Corpus Concert Hall, CASA San Miguel’s Pundaquit Virtuosi will stage its homecoming concert from India. Pundaquit Virtuosi will perform its India tour repertoire featuring the music of classical composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Vivaldi, and Ludwig van Beethoven, and Filipino masters Antonio Molina (National Artist), Manuel Velez, and Willy Cruz.

Project Saysay also teamed up with Pundaquit Virtuosi in performing five more musical pieces. These songs are from the selections under Project Saysay’s incubator project, Project Huni, launched online last February: the 1933 “O Dueña Halina”, a musical adaptation of Maestro Miguel Trinidad of Andres Bonifacio’s alleged courtship poem for Gregoria de Jesus; the 1937 “Votad!” (Vote!), the anthem of the Filipino women suffrage; and the “cundiman” and “comintang” musical pieces in 1847 Jose Honorato Lozano’s Álbum: Vistas de las Islas Filipinas y Trajes de Sus Habitantes from the collections of Biblioteca Nacional de España. These selections are to be performed for the first time after decades and centuries.

The night will be capped with launching of sky lanterns.

The anniversary will conclude with the book launching and lecture of Ian Christopher Alfonso, founder and executive director of Project Saysay and author of The Nameless Hero: Revisiting the Sources on the First Filipino Leader to Die for Freedom (Holy Angel University Press, 2016), at 2 p.m. The book extols the story of the Battle of Bangkusay of 3 June 1571 that produced the country’s first martyr of freedom whom the Spaniards deliberately condemned to anonymity and obscurity. The said nameless historical figure, a young general from Macabebe (now a Pampanga town), was the first in history of the country to be honored by way of a national historical marker from the state in 2016.

The event is open to public with gate entrance (with cocktails) at PhP 200.00 for March 25, and PhP 100.00 on March 26. For inquiries, contact CASA San Miguel at 0917.838.2752. CASA San Miguel is located at Evangelista St., Brgy. San Miguel, San Antonio, Zambales.

This event is also sponsored by the Office of the Governor of Zambales, Office of the Mayor of San Antonio, Zambales, Victory Liner Inc., Pepsi Philippines, Funtastic Park Subic, and Punto! Central Luzon.