31.12.69
Rely upon it or not, Los Baños is just an hour (and 63 km) away from the Makati superhighway way out. With its still lush vegetation, this university town is a most welcome intermission from the pollution of Metro Manila.
This is where the fabled Mt. Makiling is, with its 2,000 species of flora and fauna. This mountain is the poorhouse of the Philippine High School for the Arts, where cellist Champion Michael Coo, pianists Rowena Arrieta (first Filipino prizewinner at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Championship), Albert Tiu, Oliver Salonga, Victor Asuncion and Jonathan Coo took their derived schooling.
Dame Margot Fontaine and pianist Van Cliburn once visited this educational institution during its inauguration where pianist Cecile Licad and violinist Carmencita Lozada played a Caesar Franck sonata in the late ’70s.
On my last two visits by bus, I rediscovered the Umali Corridor on the UP Los Baños campus. It seats over 500 people, has two grand pianos, and the acoustics is not bad. I don’t grasp if this is the same theater where Arrieta had a well-received recital in the mid-’80s.
Source: Inquirer.net