The Candidates
Message
Lyric Piano & Organ Corporation, in cooperation with KAWAI PIANOS, is delighted once again to be a part of THE ULTIMATE PIANIST COMPETITION and OPUSFEST: THE INTERNATIONAL PIANO & CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL PHILIPPINES.
We are wholeheartedly committed to the core objective of discovering and promoting young Filipino pianists!
Through the years, LYRIC has been supporting these activities as a means to strengthen our ties with dedicated and promising talents.
We sincerely wish another success for this 2008 edition of both the Ultimate Pianist Competition and OPUSFEST!
Alma Joy P. Cristobal
President
In Memoriam
LOURDES L. VILLANUEVA-CRUZ
LOURDES “LULU” L. VILLANUEVA-CRUZ was born on March 27, 1917 in the Visayan province of Bacolod, Negros Occidental. She was the eldest of the seven children of Spanish music critic Don Jose G. Villanueva and Doña Pura Lacson, the first female conductor in the Philippines. Her father was determined to have a Concert Pianist in his family that immediately after Lulu was born, he placed her on top of a piano, as if sacrificing his daughter to the life of a Concert Artist.
In 1934, Lulu graduated high school from the St. Scholastica’s College, where she was the youngest pupil of the legendary pedagogue Sr. Baptista Battig, OSB, a pianistic descendant of Franz Liszt. Seven years later, she married one of the Philippines’ Life Insurance pioneers, Delfin Rivera Cruz, on November 22, 1941, two weeks before the Japanese occupation of World War II. In 1948, Lulu graduated with a Bachelor of Music Degree, after which she pursued a life dedicated to her family, in helping the poor and the aged, and teaching piano to children.
Lulu founded the Cherubim Nursery which had a curriculum that included lessons in Piano, Ballet, Stringed Instruments, Arithmetic, English, and even the Emily Post Method on Social Graces. In 1970, she founded the RSVP International, a non-profit organization for the poor, young seminarians, and the aged. She believed that her mission in life was a versatile one that she helped translate Spanish for non-English speaking immigrants in Manchester (England), volunteered to read for the blind at the St. Francis Xavier School for the Blind in lower Manhattan, assisted the homeless at the St. Joan of Arc Church in Queens, and established the Christian Family Movement in Manila.
At a very young age, she became a Professor in Piano, alongside her mother, at the Assumption College and afterward at the Maryknoll College. She became a significant member of the Piano Teachers Guild of the Philippines and continued to teach privately in her Quezon City studio. From 1980 to 1991, she taught piano privately in New York City, where her young pupils garnered opportunities to perform in concert halls such as the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, the Alice Tully Hall of Lincoln Center, and the Kalayaan Hall of the Philippine Center. She was also a member of the Music Teachers National Association in the United States and the Associated Music Teachers League of New York.
In 1973, Lulu produced an ensemble consisting of four generations of musicians (herself, her mother, her violinist brother and pianist sister, her two daughters and one son, and her three grandchildren) and competed to win a Special Award in the 1st National Music Competitions for Young Artists (NAMCYA, Large Ensemble Category). Lulu passed away on June 1, 2003, after being married for 61 years and giving birth to ten children -- eight boys and two girls -- of which the youngest is a Concert Pianist, a Professor in Piano, and a Concert Producer.