Simbang Gabi

Celebrating the 2020 holiday season in the midst of the Covid pandemic has been a global challenge but creativity found a way to undermine this: virtually!

Hence, we came up with another virtual choir project – Lucio San Pedro’s Simbang Gabi. It has been the perfect music specimen as it is a piece that heralds the start of the Christmas season, especially in the Philippines.

Not far behind “Sa Ugoy ng Duyan”, seasonal “Simbang Gabi” is perhaps the second most sung among San Pedro’s choral works. It has perhaps become a standard go-to piece, a hymn almost, at every Filipino church that has a resident choir (which is pretty much every church in the Philippines). This is the local signal song, jubilantly proclaiming that on the 16th of December, Christmas is coming and will be celebrated through nine days of dawn masses (Simbang Gabi) leading to Christmas Eve.

Of course, around this time of the year (and even right after All Saint’s Day), every house, office, store and any standing structure in the country will already be adorned with Christmas decors, colored string lights, parols, etc., almost like bypassing Advent altogether. Traffic is much worse but people are more jovial, shopping malls are packed, coats and jackets are worn again as the evening breeze gets cooler every night…

There is just this lingering festive atmosphere everywhere.

Virtual Choir Behind the Scenes

Towards the end of September, 2020, my fellow University of the Philippines Concert Chorus colleagues, Noriz Castillo and Bing Cacnio approached me with the plans of tackling Simbang Gabi as UPCC’s Christmas final virtual choir project for the year. Right away, I knew that this was going to be a monumental task, knowing how challenging the piece is.

And I don’t know why I offered to make a virtual orchestra to accompany the vocal tracks.

Excitement must have overcome my better judgement. If UPCC members and alumni were to participate, there will be a ton of voices in the mix, meaning the work will exponentially be more difficult. However, a piano accompaniment will not be able to aurally support the magnitude of the choir. It just will not cut through the vocal mass.

After the initial plans, the project commenced. Noriz started inviting UPCC members to join and as Bing started putting the video clip submissions together. I began recording my virtual orchestra tracks on the computer. I, however, only had the choral/piano music at hand so I had to re-imagine the orchestral part according to how I remember it played when, back in the 80’s or early 90’s, the UPCC performed Simbang Gabi with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra at one of the holiday productions at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. My recollection was not perfect and sampled computer sounds have different limitations and strengths so I ended up with a completely altered orchestral arrangement. I humbly apologize to Maestro San Pedro if the arrangement is not to his liking – may he continue to rest in peace. Deo gracias!

My entire repository of sounds came from Spitfire Symphony Orchestra, Alicia’s Keys and some home-made samples which I have been using for quite sometime though not often to this extent. Since I had a day job at the Philippine Cultural Foundation, Inc. during the week and played in church on the weekends, I only had my evenings to work on this. I just had to take it easy on Netflix and Facebook. And less gardening. And less time eating. It will be utterly irresponsible of me to state this, but the pandemic was a sort of relief, otherwise I would have had other gigs on my plate to worry about. It took me roughly three weeks to work on the orchestral accompaniment, spending an hour or two each night on the project.

By early November, we came upon enormous stumbling blocks. First, San Pedro’s piece must indeed have been a pretty tough one to record alone because not too many singers were submitting their vocal tracks! Second, super typhoon Goni hit the Philippines on October 31, causing floods and power outages in Manila. Nonetheless, I came up with the first trial mix on November 3 with only 17 singers in the mockup: something like 4 sopranos, 7 altos, 3 tenors and 3 basses. The mix sounded like a slightly bigger group of back-up singers being drowned in a sea of symphonic sounds! There was no way we were going for a premiere on December 1 with a disproportional setup such as that!

This is where UPCC’s director, Jai Aracama, with the help of Noriz Castillo, Grace Medalla-Santos and Atty. Dot Gancayco, had to literally rally the herd to get more submissions by basically making a Facebook door-to-door just to get more members to participate. Bing, who also had a prior video editing gig, had to squeeze in Simbang Gabi teaser videos just to entice people and to make them know what to expect. I, on the other hand, had an emergency molar extraction that left me useless for about three days. December 1 premiere was now moved to December 16.

I guess the super marketing efforts must have worked and Bing’s teaser videos must have stirred FOMO that within a couple of weeks, the measly 17-singer count ballooned to 93! For me, that was the perfect number!

The spike of submissions really put Bing and I working our butts off during the coming weeks. There were numerous Messenger exchanges on who is not in sync, too loud, too soft, who has not submitted, there’s a dog barking in the background, tricycle noise, etc. At each submission though, I was getting more and more amazed at how much talent was going into the main mix everyday! I could say I am so proud of and humbled by my UPCC family because no matter where in the world they are, no matter what profession they do, no matter how young or old, no matter how many kids they have (special mention and congratulatory note to flutist, Ray Sison, who at that time just fathered his first[?] baby), no matter how healthy or sickly, bored or busy, each one can and will deliver with remarkable skill! What an honor to be laying their voices side by side in a virtual concert hall!

Also, each vocal track that I stacked in the mix was a fond audio memory of somebody whom, at one point in my life, I have connected with in one way or another. That was always a special moment, a sort of reunion on a totally different level.

Eventually, through hard work and persistence, Bing and I were able to finish the final mix around the 10th of December. Upon Jai’s final approval, Simbang Gabi premiered via Youtube and Facebook on December 12, 2020, twelve days behind and four days ahead of schedule!

Many thanks to everyone involved in this one-of-a-kind production! See you in the next virtual choir project!

Simbang Gabi Team

A Virtual Performance by the
UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES CONCERT CHORUS
Members and Alumni

Jai Sabas-Aracama
Music Director

Noris delos Reyes-Castillo
Project Manager

Bing Alvarez-Cacnio
Video Editing

Nhick Ramiro Pacis
Audio Editing
Virtual Orchestra Arrrangement

Ray Sison
Flutist

PRODUCTION SUPPORT
Jeanelle Roldan
Elaine Grospe
Claire Ampil
Edgar Labor
Arnold Holgado
Grace Medalla-Santos
Nina Macaraig-Gamboa