A taste of good music at Vino Bar

The gift was given her at birth but it took Luisa Sta. Maria several years to finally find a good, easy way to bring it out.

“When I was young, the only thing I knew was that I could carry a tune. There was not even the slightest idea that singing will be something I would do professionally,” says Ms. Sta. Maria.

After years of taking her gift for granted, Ms. Sta. Maria now earns a living out of her voice following a year-long singing contract she sealed with the management of Saipan’s Aqua Resort Club.

Hers is the voice behind easy-listening songs that reverberate around Aqua Resort Club’s Vino Bar, a romantic getaway that provides alternative mood to the island’s usual gimmick zone — the upbeat and boisterous commercial district of Garapan.

The songs she plays at the Vino Bar offer one good reason for the island’s romantics to drive up Achugao for a taste of sentimental music that have been immortalized by one singer’s rendition to another.

“It’s fulfilling to know that a lot of people appreciate the kind of songs that I sing which are actually mostly requested by the people who come here for a wholesome, romantic night,” says Ms. Sta. Maria.

But one has to like the songs if she wants to give justice to it. She believes that a song is just a rhythmic sound unless the singer performs it from the heart. “It’s one way to just sing a song and another way to give life to it.”

Ms. Sta. Maria remembers auditioning for a church choir when she was in grade school. Although she got in, she was no more than just one of the voices that echo the walls of their parish church in a suburb city in Metro Manila.

She adds that she had been merely singing songs until she had to perform solo in a high school presentation. That was the time when she forced herself to bring her emotions out in order to give justice to the song.

There was no stopping Ms. Sta. Maria from singing solo since then. The applause gave her the drive to move on and join amateur singing competitions until she found herself trying out for a noontime television show contest.

She made it to the grand finals of the singing competition in Student Canteen, once a popular TV program in the Philippines hosted by famous personalities as Eddie Ilarde, Bobby Ledesma, Coney Reyes and the late Helen Vela.

But when she thought the being able to make it to the finals was already fulfilling enough, Ms. Sta. Maria’s rendition of the Irene Cara hit Out Here on My Own bested all other contestants.

“Winning that prestigious contest that was judged by the best in Philippine music industry strengthened my belief that I could not only carry a tune. I told myself there was really a singer in me,” she says.

Although winning the television contest made her realize that she could make a career out of singing, Ms. Sta. Maria did not immediately plunge into the music industry but worked her way to a college education and eventually finished with a degree in fine arts.

After college, she worked full-time as an illustrator for an animation company in the Philippines which does television commercials and print advertisements, as well as animated movies.

However, the persistence of her deep love for music brought her to a weekly gig in a music bar in Quezon City — Pook Luntian which was a popular hangout for mainstream Filipino reporters.

“I thought of singing professionally during my free time not for anything else but because I want to be able to reach out to other people one of the things that I do best and that is singing,” Ms. Sta. Maria says.

While singing part-time after office and on weekends in several bars around Manila, Ms. Sta. Maria accepted a lucrative job in the local music scene recording songs for multiplex, a different type of minus one.

“I had three booking agents who were responsible for my gigs in several hotel lounges around Metro Manila. That was when I started singing accompanied only by piano,” she adds.

In 1999, Ms. Sta. Maria completely gave up her career in animation to concentrate on her singing, which makes her one-year stint at the Vino bar her first full-time singing job.