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Florante Aguilar - Bio, Albums, Songs and Lyrics - OPM Filipino MusicThe Story of Florante AguilarFlorante Aguilar is born in Manila but he grew up in Cavite province where he learned to play the octavina in a rondalla group. At an early age, he picked up the guitar by way of rock and roll and by sixteen; he was enrolled at the University of the Philippines College of Music where he was trained as a classical musician. In 1985, he toured Europe, United States and Asia for 6 ½ months performing in main cities both as a soloist and ensemble player. Shortly, he transferred to New York under a scholarship to study at the Manhattan School of Music with Sharon Isbin, a Grammy Award winner and current guitar department chair of the Juilliard School. He also studied with the internationally-recognized Filipino guitarist Michael Dadap and has performed in masterclasses of guitar luminaries such as David Russell, Manuel Barrueco, David Starobin, Frederic Hand and Benjamin Verdery. Later, Florante accepted a position with the pioneering Buffalo Guitar Quartet where he traveled and recorded the critically-acclaimed CD New Music for Four Guitars (New World 384-2). He then received his Bachelor of Music Degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1996 under the support of David Tanenbaum. Florante Aguilar is a critically-acclaimed guitarist that is considered as one of the leading proponents of Philippine harana music in America today. He is also the primary figure in Philippine guitar music these days. His compositions and arrangements reveal complexity and deep perceptive of the form, successfully creating the right balance between respect and redefinition of a tradition. He is relaxed playing traditional western standard music as a virtuoso performer and also ventures into modern music and other genres with simplicity. But his true love and affinity belongs to the music he grew up with in the Philippines – the music of the past era called the harana. His constant search for a tradition-based contemporary Filipino sound led him to champion harana music - songs used in the now-vanished Filipino courtship ritual of serenading. Aguilar's compositions, which use strong Philippine motifs in a modern context, include works for guitar, octavina, violincello, percussion, as well as song cycles and a zarzuela. Florante was newly awarded a grant by the San Francisco Arts Commission to compose a brand new work in the harana style titled Lalawigan - A Tagalog Song Cycle to premiere in Spring of 2009. One of Florante’s unforgettable memories of his boyhood was playing an octavina and guitar in a rondalla ensemble led by his neighbor’s gardener. Francisco or Ti Ikong, a septuagenarian at that time, was a virtuoso of the banduria and octavina and have kept his band of equally virtuosic and equally vintage rondalla players. At the age of 9, Florante found himself jamming with the most genuine and experienced practitioners of rondalla music as well as the art of harana. The harana, though the name of this particular musical style, also refers to the traditional practice itself of courtship whereby a maiden is serenaded beneath her window at night. Although the practice has since died out, the music survives, preserved and even elevated to an art form worthy of a concert piece. Florante champions Philippine music not only through solo guitar but with singers and ensembles performing throughout the United States. Presently, Florante uses a 2002 Fontanilla guitar built by a Filipino-American luthier Alan Fontanilla. Even though Florante usually favors the meow-make-love-to-me-now tender tones of the spruce-top guitar, Alan’s cedar-top guitar gives a “refreshing departure” into a more hot-blooded pagan sound. Florante plays the lights out of this guitar as evidenced by the appalling number of scratches - a lot for a one-year old guitar. Florante also likes to use the Fontanilla for live performances due to its great playability and superb sound projection. And simply because "it kicks ass". For the Art of Harana recording, Florante used a vintage spruce-top 1962 Velazquez "El Clasico". It possesses a sweet and full-bodied sound with great sustain as only a 44-year old guitar can muster. This guitar perfectly complements the singing tones of a harana. But as often happens with older guitars, the fretboard has bent considerably due to decades of string tension. This results into higher action that makes it more challenging to play. Florante likes to use this excuse if one detects labored passages in the recording. The Velasquez was lent for the recording by Dean Kamei, owner of Guitar Solo store in San Francisco and GSP Publications. Instead of Fontanilla, Florante also used a spruce-top 1989 Marin Montero, a 1988 Kohno “Special” which is used to record with the Buffalo Guitar Quartet’s New Music for Four Guitars, and presently, a Cordoba 75R rigged with a Fishman mic for gigging purposes. Have A Great Story About the Artist?
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