Cecile Licad’s tones of home

Taking logistics by the lapel of its tuxedo, several classical musicians have dared to play in the most unfeasible spots on earth: Daniel Barenboim took the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to Ramallah in the West Bank; Yo-Yo Ma performed right at the border between the US and Mexico; and Ludovico Einaudi played a Steinway on a floating platform in the Arctic, in the middle of glaciers and murmuring winds. It’s interesting how the most achingly familiar pieces of music come from the strangest of places. When asked by my editor Millet Mananquil what Cecile Licad hasn’t done in the Philippines but dreams of someday doing, Cecile smiles and answers: to play atop the Banaue Rice Terraces.

Imagine strains of Chopin or Rachmaninoff being coaxed by the pianist from a solitary Hamburg Steinway grand perched atop the carved hill, in an event blessed by the vanguards of Ifugao. Downhill there’d be a throng of open-mouthed onlookers. This is but a dream, of course. But dreaming, in these tempestuous times, is our last flexing of freedom. And Cecile Licad, the girl who lived in Quezon City until she was 11 and moved to America to become (according to The New Yorker) the pianist’s pianist, still loves that sweet, extraordinary cadenza of dreams.

“I grew up very ordinarily,” confesses Cecile. “Nothing special. Our family was weird in a sense that there’d be not enough food for everyone, and everybody’s always scrambling.” She was kind of a tomboy then, fending off her big brothers at the dinner table. But there was already a piano in the Buencamino-Licad household, waiting for the right pair of hands (probably like the lightsaber hidden in a chest in a scene from The Force Awakens, beckoning the Jedi in the making).

“The piano was where nobody could bother me, it was my safety net,” she says. The young Cecile would eavesdrop on her mother, Rosario, as she taught music theory to her sons. But it was the girl who soaked it all in. Flash forward to the present—following decades in a distant key—Cecile is back in the country for a series of outreach concerts (from Pinto Art Museum to Iloilo to Virac, Catanduanes) plus a main one presented by Rustan’s at the Manila Metropolitan Theater on Sept. 24, 6:30 p.m.

In the days leading up to the gig, every morning she eats a particular dish because it reminds her of that long-ago home. This woman can eat whatever she likes but chooses paksiw.

“I like the sourness. I grew up with that. As a young girl, when I was practicing in the morning with my father, he’d go to the palengke, and he’d make me fish with tons of green peppers. I’d also eat siling labuyo with patis or suka.” The dish makes her feel like she hasn’t grown up.

“I have a mind that’s still childlike, and I get along with kids. Well, I get along with anyone—with taxi drivers, people who work in the apartment building, janitors. I’m more comfortable with people I can converse with—in street talk. Meaning, I can be myself more,” she laughs.

Just an ordinary lady living in New York, perhaps? Wait until she gets in front of a piano and then she transforms into this hypnotic force of nature: a demigoddess flitting with a whirlwind of 20 fingers, it would seem, feverishly summoning the ghosts of past composers in her own unique way; a contemporary artist steeped in the concerns of today—what worries us and, at the same time, what brings us wonder.

What goes through her mind when performing in a concert?

“I just get into the spirit of it,” she explains. “I get taken away. But I’m also influenced by what’s going on around me. Whether it’s pain or even silliness. When I hear something, I work on the music and imagine it a certain way. But then when the performance comes, another thing carries me. Something new comes out.” She gets surprised herself. So, to rein it all in—this nameless rambunctious maelstrom that propels artists of Licad’s level—preparation is key. Being prepared and being ready for anything allow the pianist to set forth on an adventure.

“I know I have to basically enjoy myself, but I can’t just play for myself. I have to transfer that feeling to the audience. That’s always my aim. If I can’t do that, it’s hard for me to play. I feel that I haven’t prepared enough.”

To go somewhere else, ultimately transcend.

“I’m a perfectionist that way. Not in the sense of playing everything correctly. But I’m a perfectionist in wanting to transmit something to the audience that they’ve never experienced before, so they experience it as something new.”

To take the piece somewhere it has never travelled, gladly beyond any experience.

Through the years, Licad has taught herself to convey such ineffable emotions more effectively.

“I guess I’m starting to feel like it’s my gift. When you’re a kid, there’s already something natural there, but it just becomes more transparent as I go along these years. I kind of know how to transform this more clearly now.”

She admits to practicing and focusing more on the important things that make up the entirety of the craft.

“Basically, it’s all about making and telling a story. Improvising in the moment. My son Otavio always asks me, ‘Why do you still practice things you already know?’ Because I always feel like a beginner. And I always have to rework things, change my fingering—because my fingers feel different every year, or at every age. Sometimes, instead of using my little finger, I’ll use my thumb. Other times, I’ll move my left hand across the other. I was watching musicians like Marcus Roberts play jazz. They’re very inventive. I think classical music should be like that, too. You can’t be too fixed, rigid. Otherwise, it doesn’t sound fresh. It just sounds like practice.”

For Licad, reinterpretation is essential. She adds, “Sometimes, it can be not good. But it’s all about taking chances, of course.”

When asked if there is a piece of music that reminds her of the special people in her life—such as the late Nedy Tantoco, for instance, her longtime friend and art patron—Cecile thinks for a moment.

“Everything reminds me of her. I immediately feel her presence. I always connect Chopin with Nedy, because she heard me play that a lot. But really, anything does. Sometimes when a piece is very tender and expressive, it reminds me of (loved ones who have passed on). Or when a piece is bad, I see their piercing eyes in it (smiles). Every person has so much character. You feel it immediately when you talk to people. With Nedy, there was something in her that was very true. I felt I could trust her. She was like an absorber. I could tell her things. She’s a genuinely real person.”

For the Manila Metropolitan Theater concert, Cecile will perform with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO) under the baton of Maestro Grzegorz Nowak.

Licad will revisit the very works that secured her place in music history. She will perform the two concertos she famously recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under André Previn: Chopin’s Concerto No. 2, which earned her the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque Frédéric Chopin, awarded by the Chopin Society in Warsaw, and Saint-Saëns’ Concerto No. 2.

“The Pianist’s Pianist” is more than a concert; it is a tribute to Filipino artistic excellence and a continuation of the legacy of the late Zenaida “Nedy” Tantoco, who tirelessly championed culture and music throughout her life.

Carrying that vision forward is Anton T. Huang, president and CEO of Rustan’s and the SSI Group, and chairman of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra Society Inc. (PPOSI). He spearheads the initiative as a meaningful fundraiser for the PPO, ensuring the orchestra’s continued pursuit of artistic excellence.

Anton recalls how his mother was both a fan and a close friend of Cecile. “She was a big supporter of Cecile,” he says. “The last time Cecile was here, as I’m sure you recall, it was upon my mom’s invitation. Unfortunately, Mom passed just a month before the concert, but we pushed through with it.”

When Licad returned, the two spoke about making her Manila performances a regular occurrence. “We wanted to do it in March of this year, which is Women’s Month,” Huang explains. “But she was invited to tour in the US—and that was extremely successful. So we scheduled it for September instead.”

For Huang, the concerts are not only personal but also a point of pride. “Cecile has huge support here in the Philippines,” he says. “It’s an honor and a privilege to be able to bring her back home to Manila as often as possible—and to organize and produce her performances here in the country.”

Asked what emotions rise up when he watches Licad play, Huang doesn’t hesitate. “Watching her is a spectacle,” he says. “The energy with which she plays is a sight to behold.”

Another sight to behold is Cecile’s sheet music, which she always has in her bag when performing (along with her string of good-luck beads she found on a beach in Iloilo).

Cecile laughs as she recalls the one time she forgot her sheet music at a recital hall in Europe. “I was already at the hall and there were only 10 minutes left,” she says. “The hotel was five minutes away and I said, ‘I have to go back to my room,’ even if I had to rush—because my music wasn’t with me.”

She leans forward. “Even though I don’t use it, it has to be there and near the stage.”

When asked whether she writes many annotations in her scores, she smiles. “People are actually amazed when they look at my sheet music.” She contrasts two approaches to the score. Some sheet music—like that of a teacher with a student—resembles a map with scribbles and indecipherable jottings. Cecile points out, “It actually makes it impure for me. I don’t like it.”

Occasionally, she says, she will write a Filipino word instead of a conventional musical direction on her sheet music. “Once in a while I’ll put a word like motorsiklo—if I see a certain center, the feeling of being on a motorcycle. Instead of using musical words like accelerando, I’ll put motorsiklo.”

She laughs at the memory of her private shorthand. “I have a code for myself. Only I understand it.”

What if the concerto shifts mood, moving from fiery, hammering plea to something more melancholy, tender, dreamlike, longing, and with the music turning inward, does Cecile Licad have a corresponding word or phrase?

Probably this: Bulong… Banaue… agaw-dilim.

Cecile Licad, internationally acclaimed pianist, returns to the Manila Metropolitan Theater on Sept. 24, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are available through Lulu Casas at 0917-5708301 or Nancy Sones at 0994-7156582. You may also purchase tickets online via Ticketmelon at https://www.ticketmelon.com/rustans/cecile-licad-concert. Ticket prices are as follows: Orchestra Center seats are priced at P5,000; Orchestra Sides at P3,500; and Balcony Center and Sides at P500.

The show is presented by Rustan’s, with partners Bank of the Philippine Islands, Megaworld Corporation, Philippine Airlines as official airline partner, Rustan Coffee Corporation, and Sta. Elena Construction & Development Corporation.

Licad will embark on a series of out-of-town concerts across the Philippines: Sept. 27 at the Cordillera Convention Hall, presented by the Baguio Country Club for its 120th anniversary; Sept. 28 at the Pinto Art Museum and Arboretum in Antipolo; Oct. 1 at the MiraNila Heritage House and Library in Quezon City.

Her tour continues in Iloilo City, with performances at Sta. Ana Parish in Molo on Oct. 6 and at the UPV Museum of Art and Cultural Heritage on Oct. 7. Finally, Licad will give a special performance at the ECrown Hotel Ballroom in Virac, Catanduanes on Oct. 11.