Baguio musicians coming home for concert-for-a-cause

By Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- Folk and country music fans here will re-live those evenings with Conrad Marzan and Mhia Tibunsay as the two lead singers of the Foggy Mountain Band reunite with their local counterparts in a coming-home concert-for-a-cause on May 23.

Conrad, on his seventh year in Northern California, arrived here recently for a reunion with his daughter Soliel and to meet his two grandsons, while Mhia, now an event organizer for a hotel in Singapore, will be here by mid-May, also to reunite with her family.

“Kindly prepare a concert so we can re-live those years performing for patients in dire need of support, between May 19 to 23, as I’d have to be back at work on the 25^th,” Mhia advised in a long-distance call last week.

Aside from the reunion concert with Bubut Olarte, March Fianza, Alfred Dizon and the Foggy Mountain Band reassembled, Conrad will take time to plant trees before flying back to the Bay Area on the 27^th.

Plans for the homecoming concert firmed up last Thursday afternoon as the Association of Government Information Officers-Cordillera (ASGIOCO) headed by Dr. Manny Quirino offered to sponsor it as a means of helping a member cope with her battle against cancer.

Quirino, head of the trauma team  of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical C enter, said the ASGIOCO will seek co-sponsors to cut on administrative costs and ensure that bulk, if not the whole proceeds from ticket sales, will go to the beneficiary.

The concert has been tentatively set at the conference hall  of the Cobalt Building of the BGHMC, with ASGIOCO members planning to sell refreshments to add to the fund for the patient.

For Conrad, Mhia and the rest of the folk and country musicians here, performing pro bono for the sick has been their cup of tea since their days at the Gingerbreadman, one of the first folkhouses to be established here in the ‘70s.

“Coming home is never complete without a pro bono concert,” Conrad said last Tuesday.Last time he was home – in July, 2010 -, Conrad led friends in planting coffee at the Longlong Elementary School in La Trinidad, Benguet, and then raised P30,000 in a concert for then 10-year old Delson Lipawen, who suffering from congenital heart ailment.