Music and identity: Gabriel Lazaro’s Berklee journey
Since coming home in September 2023 from Berklee College of Music in the United States, Gabriel Lazaro has been hard at work as a full-time musician. He plays either guitar, bass guitar, or trumpet as a sessionist for bands like Lola Amour, and for solo acts such as Armi Millare and Johnoy Danao. He’ll be part of the latter’s two-night concert at the Metropolitan Theater in Manila this March.
Lazaro is also the vocalist and trumpet player for the jazz band Intentions. The other members are Kurt Acosta (guitar), Bergan Nuñez (Bass), Jacques Dufourt (drums), Benny Carrot (percussion), and Ruscel Torres (piano). They usually do covers of songs that represent the style and culture of jazz music that has developed in the United Kingdom.
Intentions played a solid two-set gig on the Saturday night that we watched them at Tago Jazz Café on Main Avenue in Cubao, Quezon City. The set list included UK jazz stars Nubya Garcia’s “Source,” Ezra Collective’s “Victory Dance,” Alfa Mist’s “Nucleus,” and Oscar Jerome’s “No Need.” It also featured Australian artist Hiatus Kaiyote’s “The World Softly Lulls” and American greats Herbie Hancock’s “Butterfly” and Julian Lage’s “Speak to Me.”
“I enjoy being a part of this collective as a member of different bands,” he told us in between sets. “But my main thing is my original music that I sing and play with my band.”
He said he is recording a new project that he hopes to release around summer. His past recordings can be found on Spotify under his name, Gabriel Lazaro.
His music is a “mix between punk, post-rock, and jazz,” he said. “I think those are the main three genres that I’m inspired by. It’s based on my influences over the years.”
Journey
Lazaro said he was about 10 years old when he became interested in music by watching his cousins play guitar. One of them, Raffy Perez, is the current drummer of Lola Amour.
Another early influence is Lazaro’s own father, the award-winning actor Ronnie Lazaro. The “Batang Quiapo” mainstay and “Green Bones” actor was a glee-club member and a rock-band frontman in his youth.
The younger Lazaro took up guitar lessons and was enrolled at the Yamaha Music School by his father and mother, Dolores “Lola” Pizarro Escribano, a teacher at the Manila branch of the Spanish government’s language and cultural center, Instituto Cervantes.
At 13, while studying at Brent International School Manila, he picked up another instrument, the tuba. He joined his school’s musical band, which participates in tournaments organized by the Asia Pacific Activities Conference.
Four years later, Lazaro became the vocalist and lead guitarist of the four-piece band Opus Weekend. After high school, he applied for a scholarship at Berklee College of Music by auditioning in the university’s alternate venue in Seoul, South Korea.
In 2018, he began his studies, majoring in guitar and then bass guitar, at the university’s main campus in Boston, Massachusetts. This was cut short in 2020 by the pandemic when he had to come home and stay for a year before returning to the US to earn his degree in 2022.
Freelance gigs
Lazaro decided to take the one-year working visa offered to international students in the US. He took on freelance gigs while learning how to play the trumpet on his own.
He noted that beyond what he learned in school, he gained a lot more from his interactions with people, both inside and outside the campus. Apart from another Filipino student in his batch and a few Filipino Americans in the university, he observed that only a few people there knew about the Philippines and its culture.
“I actually rediscovered my identity over there,” he shared. “Because growing up in Manila, going to an international school … I was focused on Western culture. When I went to the US, all of a sudden I was able to appreciate my uniqueness, in terms of my background being Spanish and Filipino. Instead of trying to hide or try to be whiter or browner or whatever, I just kinda accepted my identity. I sort of became more comfortable with myself. I think that’s due to the mix of people around me as well.”
Lazaro’s face lit up when asked about how being Filipino Spanish enriches his own music. “At my age, 26, I only started really learning and actively researching the music of my country within this past year. So, I’m a little bit late to the party in that sense. All my influences, like I said, were based on Western, American music. It’s only now that I’m realizing what a rich and beautiful culture our country has, in terms of indigenous music up to the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s up until now.”
That’s how he started learning about the traditional and indigenous music in the Philippines, particularly the kulintang and gamelan. He also began delving into the music of fellow artists, like Dong Abay, who was also at Tago Jazz Café.
Noting the nearly full venue, Lazaro said there’s a growing live music scene these days. “People want to go and see live music and they want to start their own bands.”
He confessed, “I was scared that after COVID, the scene would die down. But it’s actually very alive still. It’s growing, I’d say.”
And fresh talent like him with something new and interesting to offer is definitely a big attraction.
