460 People Sing Gloc9 Hits

In celebration of the National Arts Month, KOROplus Upuan x Sirena brought 460 local youth together to perform hit records of OPM band gloc-9 at Ayala Malls Cinema Legazpi on February 28, 2023. 

KOROplus Sirena x Upuan is a one-day choral event in partnership with Bicol University, Albay Arts Foundation, and Ayala Malls Legazpi. As an experimental choral performance of an original Filipino song, the paritipants rehearsed  for about three hours. 

The participants included students from  various high schools, colleges, and universities in the province as well as project alums, band members, film crew, sounds and lights crew, project staff, cinema staff, and representatives from Bicol University and Albay Arts Foundation. The songs that were chosen for this installment of KOROplus were Upuan and Sirena by the Original Pilipino Music band, gloc-9 (Aristotle Pollisco). These socially relevant songs explored themes and narratives on socioeconomic inequality, abuse of power, and LGBTQIA+.

The event started with an opening vocal exercise from Uno Armena of Bicol University Humanities Department. Jan Aldrin Belisario, the choirmaster and project head, led several choral exercises before proceeding to the song rehearsals. The highlight of the KOROplus Upuan x Sirena was the final performance, which was filmed and audio-recorded.

After the recording, the participants were given surprise performances from homegrown music acts—dwta, Rahuyo, Jan Roberts, and Al Jang. The event concluded an acknowledgment speech from Jan Aldrin Belisario, the President and Founding Creative Director of The Dawani Project.

Aujel Orosco, a Political Science sophomore from Bicol University said that he passed by a KOROplus event before the pandemic and have always wanted to join. “I like singing and it’s cool to do it alone, but it is indeed true that in singing, the more is merrier.”

“I learned a lot from the choirmaster in that short time. And the theme of the songs revolve around socio-civic issues and that made our singing emotional,” Orosco added.

“No words can describe my KOROplus experience,” David Joshua Casquejo said. “It was my first time playing for 400 plus singers! Everyone was amazing–the musicians, the production team, the singers, the film crew, and the execom.”

Casquejo, with John Paul Lanuza, arranged the band’s music on that very same day.

The KOROplus Upuan x Sirena film was uploaded on The Dawani Project, Inc. Facebook page on March 5, 2023. After two months, it has garnered 1.7 million views and hundreds of thousands of online engagements as of writing.

KOROplus aims to bring people together through singing and is open to everyone. Watch it here.