Read more about “Visiting Home” below!
about “In a Daydream” & “Only to Say Goodbye”
Though written as orchestration assignments for my masters degree, these works were written with the knowledge of a Philippines trip in mind.
“In a Daydream” was drafted before the trip. Funnily enough, the theme of the orchestration assignment for this piece was “flight,” so to channel my excitement and anxieties of my impending trip onto the assignment felt very easy to me.
“Only to Say Goodbye” was written about one month after my return; nostalgia and pining for the Philippines lingered in my mind. There was also the concept of sonder that became a recurring theme during the composition process. At first, the sonder would focus broadly on the human condition, but at moments it would narrow down to the Philippine population as I reflected my time there. All the natives go on with their days, blissfully unaware of my jealously and yearning to see their lives in their eyes. I yearn to see how they call our country home in a way I can never fathom. Just as I get to know more of what it’s like to be at “home,” the feeling fades as soon as I leave, as if forced to stay on the archipelago.
Major thanks goes to the NYU Percussion Ensemble and the Budapest Scoring Orchestra for bringing these pieces to life! The latter ensemble was recorded remotely, so it was a unique dynamic between the composer and the orchestra all through virtual means!
about “I Remember You”
The second piece of this EP began as a rescore to the garden scene from Studio Ghibli’s “Spirited Away” (2001). To hear the piece in its original context, please click here.
As a last hurrah before summer, 30+ musician friends from Oberlin Conservatory came together at Clonick Recording Hall to quickly rehearse and perform the 3-minute score – credits are below. Special thanks goes to Ben Rodriguez as the recording engineer/mixer, Arthur Welsh for photos, and Alika Shum for coordinating pizza. This piece would not exist if not for every person on here!
In the movie, our protagonist Chihiro almost forgets her name – the only connection to the real world, to her family, and to an extent her home. However, it is her new friend Haku that rekindles her memory, saying”I remembered yours” while handing Chihiro her shirt and card that she brought with her to the spirit world.
My dual-life as a Filipino kid growing up in America often lent itself to only small fragments of my childhood acknowledging my culture. For me, especially being surrounded by non-Filipinos, it was difficult to not mindful of my heritage. Yet, like Haku, my parents and family constantly remind me and my younger generation the Filipino traditions and idiosyncrasies that connect us back home. Even if home seems to be out of reach (for Chihiro and for me), these moments with my family help foreshadow the same feelings of purpose and pride when taking the trip to the archipelago.
The parallel made the addition of the rescore into “Visiting Home” a natural choice. It was fitting for the new track title to reference Haku’s line: “I Remember You.”
JOHNUM PALADO 