A Coming Home (Part 2 of 2)
Ateneo alumnus Paulo Tiról is a self-taught musician turned composer, lyricist, arranger, music director, and keyboardist. His training in the Philippines includes working intimately with the award-winning inspirational vocal group Hangad, and designing and scoring music for a few films. Later on, he decided to pursue music full-time and moved to Boston to study, and then afterward to New York. He currently writes and composes for musical theater.
While he was still in his home country, he briefly did film scoring. In 2005, he composed music for the short film “Mansyon”. The film won and was nominated for various awards in the local scene and was also selected in international film festivals. Learning about Tiról’s liturgical background gives depth to the music that he made, with melodies carefully capturing the emotion evoked and needed by the scene. It also gives of a sense of identity in his musical style. In 2010, he scored the independent film “Sampaguita, National Flower”. With the film working with a national symbol, Tiról further employs the theme and makes a brave rendition of the Philippine national anthem which he titled “Anthem”. Its slow, melancholic melody would sound foreign at first, but would then be easily recognizable to any Filipino. It was interestingly unsettling to listen to because it estranges what is supposedly familiar, much as how the film invites us to reevaluate our attitude toward life. Tiról’s music adds a beautiful layer into the films he worked on.
Two years after he moved to the United States, he was asked to write “Saint Peter’s Mass” for Saint Peter’s University Campus Ministry, a Jesuit university in New Jersey. In his preface on the work he said, “Composing Saint Peter’s Mass was, to me, a homecoming to liturgical music.” This was a returning to his roots and one that he again can share with a community. What I appreciate the most about his work is how it is designed to be “catchy” and how it should easily allow everyone to participate in singing. Liturgical music is supposed to move and unite, and he does so with this.
His most current works are in the musical theater genre. He attended New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts where he was part of the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program. His work “On This Side of the World” is inspired by “the Filipino immigrant experience in the United States,” while “The Forgetting Snow,” book and lyrics by Kathleen Wrinn, is about “guns in America through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl.”
Tiról’s entire journey is a coming home, less than to a specific place, but to himself. While there was uncertainty in his pledging himself to music, it was a necessary step. (Read “Passion or Paycheck” by Macky Manlulo.) His identity is engraved in every work he does. From the scoring which he momentarily fiddled with, to his long and deep relation to liturgical music, to his new way of storytelling through musical theater, we see his story – finally, he is home.
*Edited and published by Bianca Bautista Photo taken from Paulo Tirol's official site (https://www.paulophonic.com/)