MANILA, Philippines -- Choir rehearsals for the University of the Philippines (UP) Manila Chorale on the ninth floor of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) or for the National City United Church's Chancel Choir on Times Street in Quezon City are never placid with the passionate conductor Nikos Ibarra Mante.
Perfecting the music in the backroom, he starts with vocalization - to even the tone as singers move from low to high notes. Singers are taught how to bring out the sound from their diaphragms through control of their abdominal muscles or a tug at the crotch, how to reverberate nasal boxes, how to falsetto and avoid high-note failures.
He has the gift of exhorting the choir. Emphasizing clean over sloppy phrasing, he says, "Let's sing this like it's SM and not Nepa-Q.... Shout. Wake the audience up. No! It's too loud. Not everything loud is exciting. Sing sweet phrases like a balm. Give the audience the feeling of the song. Sing light and clear. Sing notes correctly. Don't kill the notes. Don't kill the music. Sing together. Show the song is ending. If you don't understand the song... mmm..50 percent of it is memorizing."
The shape of the music that keeps ringing in his mind has to be produced. With rounded gestures, he pulls up a curtain of voices to cathedral heights. His mobile and animated face reminds the choir how they are supposed to sing a piece of music: with transparent quality, punchy syncopation, or calm intensity. Hard to satisfy, he has stormed out of unproductive sessions.
All the hard work and vocal limbering are intended to take the music he feels in his heart onstage. "I always like the transparent sound, the so-called English Cathedral tones," he says of religious music. Achieving it is difficult for a choral group but more difficult still is Mante's avowed aim for himself: to marry technique and meaning, like water and oil, in music.
This dedication has paid off in terms of awards for the UP Manila Chorale, which won two gold prizes at the Anton Bruckner Choir Competition in Linz, Austria - the first time in 2007, and repeated last June 2011. The 26-strong school choir won gold in the category of youth choir with mixed voices, edging out a Croatian choir, the Komorni Zbor Umjetnicve Akademije v Osijen. Mante's group was one of the five gold medalists in the competition where 25 choirs vied for recognition.
For the grand prize, the UP Manila Chorale joined six other seeded choral groups in a competition ultimately won by Vokalemsemble Hard Chor and Lala Vocalemsemble, both of Austria.
Mante takes particular pride in minting the UP Manila Chorale's competition piece Abendlied, a sacred and romantic choral piece by German composer Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839-1901). The choir's "ethereal and haunting sound" successfully exemplified Abenlied's phrase, "Stay with us, the night is here" -- spoken by the disciples of Jesus when they realized He was with them, in the flesh, after His death and resurrection.
"I think I understood Abendlied more when I conducted it this year than when I did it in 2007," Mante recalls. "Suddenly, I understood the rhythm of the music, its language, and the threading of the voices that brought out the story and the song. I think I finally found the sound that the composer had exactly imagined when he composed that piece (at 16) in 1845," he says.
One of the judges of the competition, Jurgend Fasbender, heaped praises on Mante, saying, "The choir's German lyrics were good. We understood it." "That acknowledgment was good enough for me," says Mante, knowing it was reward enough for the research that he had lavished on the piece; and the choir's perfect phrasing and beautifully threaded harmony that brought the piece to aesthetic expression.
Mante is always fixated on choral works that are challenging and difficult, not to mention spiritual and lofty.
"I conducted Requiem , a hauntingly lyrical and spiritual composition by Gabriel Faure, an agnostic French composer (1845-1924), four times, since 2005, to observe how I would mature with the work," he explains. His other dream piece is the difficult composition of Giaochino Rossini (1792-1861), Petit Musse Soltenne or Little Solemn Mass because "it is not a little solemn mass at all".
Mante's rule is to know the music through the composer and his culture. "It is important to know the extra-musical part of the composition: why and when the composer wrote that piece, his state of mind, his audience, and his purpose in creating music. They represent 60 percent of my homework. The 40 percent is really me, my interpretation of the music I am conducting," he says of his imaginative task.
He cites three different kinds of conductors who have inspired and shaped him: Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), Herbert Von Karajan (1908-1989), and Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004). Bernstein was the flamboyant American conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra who composed West Side Story and popularized Gustav Mahler to Americans. Karajan was the Austrian composer and conductor of the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras who sold 200 million records of classical music. Kleiber was the Austrian genius-composer, who snubbed an offer to conduct Berlin Philharmonic after Karajan's death. "He was crazy, he would talk to himself," says Mante.
In the past, Mante's aim was to conduct the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra; now, he dreams of conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. "They are simply fantastic," he gushes. "I try to approach that seemingly impossible but ambitious dream by making myself more mature with the works that I conduct."
The road to conducting began at the UP College of Music where he finished his Bachelor's degree. "In school, I always thought of myself as a pianist or a singer. Then, I met Sir Rey Paguio, the conductor of the UP Concert Chorus. He fired up my imagination. He made me think I could be a conductor. Two years of touring Europe, the United States, and Canada with the UP Concert Chorus reinforced my idea that I could make a profession out of music."
His first mentor taught him "the psychology of being a conductor". He admired Paguio's eagerness to work with diamonds in the rough. "He made non-music majors sing; he believed in the beauty of starting something from scratch," says Mante.
Other mentors include Dr. Ramon Santos: "He helped me understand the music of Nicanor Abelardo (1893-1934) and to look for new musical languages". He mentions his piano teacher Leonor Kilayko, who stayed in Germany for 17 years where she studied in a master's class under piano professor Gunter Ludwig in one of the universities in Cologne and was selected to demonstrate in piano the lectures of Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau (one of the world's best pianists). "She taught me to ask questions about everything. It's the German way of education. She's the reason why I always research on the music that I conduct."
Mante owes his musicality to his late mother Lelah, a church organist who could play pieces by Sergie Rachmaninoff; his father James, a sweet-voiced tenor at the NCUC choir. Mante is married to song-bird Michelle Aguilar of the UP Manila Chorale and the NCUC choir, and now a pharmacist at Bayer AG.
Apart from teaching high school students at Miriam College, Mante is slowly climbing to the top where luminaries such as Joel Navarro of Calvin College; Eudy Palaruan of the Union Church of Manila; Jojo Velasco of the Ateneo Chamber Singers; Mark Anthony Carpio of the Philippine Madrigal Singers; Janet Sabas-Aracama of the UP Concert Chorus; Jerry Dadap of the Andres Bonifacio Choir; Fidel Calalang of UST Singers; Romy Pizana of His Sounds; and Naomi Sison of Faith Gospel Singers, hold artistic reign.
