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Tita King, the grande dame of music, dies at 9o
Philippines National Artist for Music Lucrecia Kasilag, died at 90 in her home in Manila's Paco district on Saturday night, a local paper said in a belated report on Monday
- By Barbara Mae Dacanay, Bureau Chief
- Published: 23:21 August 18, 2008
Manila: Philippines National Artist for Music Lucrecia Kasilag, died at 90 in her home in Manila's Paco district on Saturday night, a local paper said in a belated report on Monday.
"Tita King" started composing during World War II and has finished over 250 folksong arrangements, opera and orchestra pieces.
Her last Filipino opera, Why Flowers Bloom In May, was produced at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines (CCP) in March 2008. She was named National Artist for Music in 1989.
Fusion music
Hailed for fusing ethnic music and folk songs with Western influences, she produced prize-winning Toccata for Percussions and Winds, Divertissement and Concertante, Filiasiana, Philippine Mass, De Profundis, and East Meets Jazz Ethnika.
She made Bayanihan Philippine Dance Company a premier artistic and cultural group in the Philippines with her modern rearrangements of folksongs and ethnic music, a stint that began in the late 1950s.
Critics said she has inspired Filipino composers to "see, feel, and fuse the dynamism of Western and Asian music".
Apart from being an artist and a composer, she was also a good administrator. Her term as president of the Cultural Centre of the Philippines during the time of former President Ferdinand Marcos has been CCP's "golden age with world-class presentations," the Inquirer said.
"There will never be another Tita King," Jazzman Richard Merck and wife, Roni Tapia Merck, former CCP's public relations head, said.
Wake began yesterday at the Loyola Memorial Chapel in Guadalupe, Makati City. Necrological service will be held at the CCP Main Theatre, and interment at Manila South Cemetery on August 21.
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