Ginugunita Kita Live in CCP

GINUGUNITA KITA is a performance art featuring the original compostions of Jesse Lucas, a multi-awarded composer for film, television, theater and dance. This is her tribute to Maningning Miclat, a trilingual poet, award-winning visual artist and art teacher.

Lucas set to music Maningning’s poems such as Ginugunita Kita, Tawag, Duet (nina Rizal at Bracken), Kulay sa Bagyo, Ang Naliligaw, A Stare, Verses # 2, To Catch a Second and Turn it to Forever, Panibugho and Shi Bu Shi (in Chinese, translated “Isn’t It?). They will be sang by soloist Banaue Miclat-Janssen with Renato Lucas on the cello and Jesse Lucas on the piano.
Directed by film and theater actor Roeder Camaňag, the performance will also feature singer Al Gatmaitan and artist Delphine Buencamino.

Maningning Miclat was a poet, fictionist and essayist in English, Filipino and Chinese as well as a painter in Western and Chinese genre. A Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate in UP Diliman, she was a fellow of the U.P. National Writer's Workshop, Silliman Writer's Workshop and Rio Alma Poetry Clinic. Her Chinese poems made her one of the top-rated women poets in Beijing.


With Ryan Cayabyab and Chino Toledo as mentors, Jesse Lucas won awards from FAMAS which catapulted him to the Hall of Fame, and from the Gawad Urian, Young Critics Circle, Gawad Tanglaw and Aliw. In 2005, he won an award from the Screamfest International Film Festival in Los Angeles, USA. CCP’s Tanghalang Pilipino, Dulaang UP, Dramatis Personae, Gantimpala Theater Foundation, Ballet Philippines and the Philippine Ballet Theater have adapted his music.

Miclat-Janssen sings the opera, acts and dances on stage and hones young artists as professor of theatre arts at UP Diliman. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts from the City University of New York and her Bachelor of Arts from UP Diliman. In New York, she attended voice lessons from Evelyn Mandac, Robert Carpenter, and CUNY's Judylee Vivier. She had a stint at the Metropolitan Opera in such productions of Salome, Faust, La Boheme, Don Carlo, I Puritani and La Traviata. She has performed at the CCP, UP Abelardo Hall, UP Theater and Ateneo de Manila University.

Renato Lucas is one of the finest cellists in the country. His schools included UP Diliman College of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music (USA), Royal Northern College of Music (England), Hochschule fur Musik Detmold (Germany), and Universitaet der Kunst Berlin (Germany). He has been the principal soloist of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra for three decades. He has performed as soloist with the Manila Symphony Orchestra, Manila Chamber Orchestra, and UST Symphony Orchestra, as well as the CCP's Filipino Artist Series, Pundaquit Arts Festival, Las Piňas Bamboo Organ Festival, and the Maningning Poetry Awards.

Reference from Joselito Toots O. Tolentino