Egay ‘Koyang’ Avenir: The guy who slept with his guitar

BUDDIES Egay Avenir (left) and Jun Viray jam at the Oxford Suites, Makati during the 6th Pijazzfest in February this year. POCHOLO CONCEPCION

There’s one guy who will be sorely missed when the 7th Philippine International Jazz Festival (Pijazzfest) reels off in February next year and that’s guitarist Edgardo Avenir—the annual event’s musical director who died September 17 of pneumonia arising from lung cancer. He was 61.

“He thought of the concept for each performance night, made the line-up of local bands, chose the session musicians for the foreign acts, took charge of the workshops and handled our website,” said singer Sandra Viray, who founded Pijazzfest with her husband, drummer Jun Viray, and Avenir.

“He was that good and reliable,” added Sandra. “Now I have to count on eight people to do his job.”

In his lifetime, Avenir took pains to gain complete knowledge of the instrument that consumed his passion as a musician—the guitar.

First, the ukulele

The eldest of six siblings, Avenir—Egay to family and close friends but Koyang to the local jazz and rock community because he called everyone by that kinship term of respect—first learned to strum the guitar from his father, Telesforo, a librarian at the University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City.

Recalled Virgilio (Vigee), the fifth of the Avenir brood: “Our father played the ukulele and passed it on to Egay. Our mother (Rosario) came from a family of pianists and she knew how to read notes. Egay learned to transpose notes from piano to guitar from her.”

Bass player Ed “Sarge” Cariño, a long-time bandmate of Avenir, remembered the early years: “Koyang and another brother, Juji (Eduardo), actually made their own guitars. They would get wood from the old UP cottages.”

Avenir practically slept with his guitar, said Vigee. “He liked playing it close to his ears before sleeping. His first idol was Chet Atkins.”

Vigee added that his brothers read Popular Mechanics magazine while attending UP High School and learned to assemble their own guitar from Lito Pada, who worked as property custodian at the UP College of Engineering.

“Egay used his own crafted guitar during his first gigs at the Sulo Hotel,” Vigee said. “It was only after his stint in Japan when he bought a branded one.”

“Koyang was very much inspired by Lito. He often mentioned his name in our conversations,” said jazz singer Zenaida Celdran, who with another jazz singer, Skarlet, took care of Avenir and attended to his medical needs when he was taken ill.

“We started as rockers,” said Jun Viray, who was with Cariño and Avenir in the band Holy Smokes which played at the nightclub strip on Dewey (now Roxas) Boulevard and in Japan.

“Two American guys turned us on to Miles Davis and other jazz artists. We were hooked,” Cariño revealed. In 1972, the Americans, Weldon McCarthy and Sam Peak, went on to play flute and saxophone, respectively, with Viray, Avenir and Cariño in the New Society Jazz Band, named so because martial law had just been imposed.

“We used to play at Third Eye behind the Luneta Hotel,” said Cariño. “It was the ‘in’ place at the time.”

In the next 39 years, Avenir spread his wings and joined one band after another—pursuing his muse while earning a living. “We were forever looking for the ‘Lost Universal Chord’ as we both called it—the one chord that appears in all forms of music from classical to jazz to indigenous to ancient times… His love of the guitar was evident in his mastery of the instrument,” said violinist John Lesaca, who was with Avenir in the bands Slick and Blackbird which played at the Calesa Bar of the then Hyatt Hotel.

Like losing a brother

A quick rundown of some of the singers and musicians Avenir had performed with showed how highly regarded he was in the scene: Boy Camara, Colby de la Calzada, Emil Mijares, Bong Peñera, Verni Varga, Uly Avante, Boy Katindig, Eddie Katindig, Menchu Apostol, Sonny Tolentino, Lorry and Onie Zamora, Tots Tolentino, Joey Quirino, Boyet Pigao, Mon David, the Apo Hiking Society, Romy Posadas, the list goes on.

Avenir was so loved by his peers and the younger generation of Pinoy jazz artists that money reportedly poured in as soon as they heard he was sick and needed help.

Skarlet hosted a couple of benefit gigs for Avenir at her own club, Skarlet Jazz Kitchen in Quezon City, while a newspaper columnist facilitated paperwork for the ailing musician’s succeeding dialysis and chemotherapy sessions.

“It was like losing a brother,” said Skarlet, who looked up to Avenir as a mentor.

Following Avenir’s wish, the Pijazzfest prelude concert “Jazzin’ Manila,” featuring guitarist Scott Henderson, bassist Jeff Berlin and drummer Dennis Chambers on October 15 at the Manila Hotel Tent City, will be open to the public.