Gerard Salonga

Gerard Salonga is a conductor, musical arranger, orchestrator and musical director from the Philippines. He began to play the piano at the age of 5 and sang duets with his elder sister, Lea Salonga, in her first album, Small Voice ("Happiness"), as well as in the compilation album for the 8th Metro Pop Music Festival ("Musika, Lata, Sipol At La La La"). Gerard is naturally associated with Lea through the length and breadth of her distinguished singing career, but had successfully established his own stature and identity in Manila's musical establishment.

Gerard completed his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Ateneo de Manila University in 1994. He subsequently went to the United States to pursue formal musical studies at the Berklee College of Music (in Boston, Massachusetts) where he graduated summa cum laude and received Berklee's Contemporary Writing and Production Achievement Award.

Upon his return, he embarked on carving his own niche in the Philippine musical landscape. He initially guest-conducted and arranged music for the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra and Manila Philharmonic Orchestra; and by 2005, he had garnered the Aliw Award for Best Musical Director for a third time. Among his stints as musical director, foremost of which are his projects with his sister Lea, Gerard Salonga had arranged and conducted music for Lani Misalucha, Martin Nievera and Regine Velasquez, amongst others. He is currently the musical director of Carmel House Studio, a recording studio, coupled with a film scoring and post-production facility, in the Alabang municipality in the outskirts of Manila. He is also the resident conductor of its in-house Global Studio Orchestra, later known as FILharmoniKA.

In 2004 and 2005 he arranged and produced compelling station IDs for the Filipino Channel, both of which won the Promax World Silver Award in New York ("Best Use of Music/Post Score with or without lyrics"). In 2006, he recorded the musical soundtrack for the supernatural horror-thriller film, Ang Pamana, which had its world premiere at the Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival. He had also embarked on a conceptual series of orchestral recordings, "Musika Natin", which features the masterworks of great Philippine composers such as the classicist Lucio San Pedro, the jazz maestro Angel Peña and the martial bandleader, Col. Antonio Buenaventura. His recordings in the contemporary mode, such as "Eastern Skies" (with jazz guitarist Johnny Alegre) and "Kumpas" (featuring performances by Pinoy Rock icons Ely Buendia, Sampaguita, Noel Cabangon and Wally Gonzales) have largely caught the imagination of a young Filipino listening audience, and fostered possibilities for the orchestra as a commercial vehicle in Original Pilipino Music.