V Day in July: A toast to romance

JOSE Mari Chan: Crowd pleaser

Valentine’s Day in July—why not? It was Jose Mari Chan’s proposal: If love makes the world go round, why celebrate it only in February?

With “It’s Complicated,” his concert with The CompanY held recently at the SMX Convention Center, Chan turned an otherwise ordinary Saturday into a grand toast to love and romance.

Exuding youthful exuberance, Chan danced and snapped his fingers as he sang the opening number, “Love at Thirty Thousand Feet,” actually a commercial jingle he wrote years earlier for Philippine Airlines.

Rush of memories

The audience reveled in a pool of mush with Chan’s “Tell Me Your Name” and The CompanY’s “Baka Ikaw.” The warm interplay of harmonies and the rush of memories proved too much for a woman seated two rows from us. She pulled out a hanky to wipe her tears.

For their spiels, Chan and the five-member CompanY (Moy Ortiz, Cecile Bautista, Jay Marquez, Annie Quintos and Sweet Plantado) bantered about love and its quirks and complexities.

Before singing “Refrain,” Chan said he wrote it after his sweetheart at the time, a girl named Mary Ann, flew to Japan to work as a missionary.

In what he described as one of the saddest moments of his life, he recorded the song and then sent it to Mary Ann. “She must have loved it,” Chan said, “because a year later, she returned and became my wife!” The couple have now been married for 41 years.

Mary Ann beamed as her husband proceeded to dedicate “Refrain” to her. Asked if she still got kilig whenever she heard the song, she told the Inquirer: “Actually, it’s not kilig. It’s kabog—kabog ng puso. Corny, but it’s true!”

THE COMPANY performs a mix of mushy and lively tunes at the concert “It’s Complicated” with Jose Mari Chan at the SMX Convention Center.

Chan went on to perform one crowd-pleaser after another: “Deep in My Heart,” “Here and Now, “Thank You, Love,” “Can We Just Stop and Talk A While.” Singing “Beautiful Girl,” he went down the stage and kissed a few of the women on their cheeks.

The CompanY sustained the mellow mood with the hit ballads “Now That I Have You,” “Everlasting Love” and “Muntik Na Kitang Minahal.”

For the finale, Chan and The CompanY dished out an OPM medley including “Big Beautiful Country” (a TV station ID jingle that Chan wrote for the martial-law era BBC channel 2), “Limang Dipang Tao,” “Swerte-Swerte Lang,” “Manila” and “Hahanapin Ko.” The performers’ upbeat singing and playful choreography gave the audience an energetic jolt after a heady dose of schmaltz.

After almost two hours of enjoying music and laughter, the crowd rose to its feet and clamored for an encore, to which Chan and The CompanY obliged, with “Afraid For Love To Fade.” Arms around each other’s shoulders, the couples around us sang along like it was, indeed, Valentine’s Day.

Essentially, the concert spotlighted Chan and his body of work. One of the country’s best-selling recording artists, the singer-songwriter was feted with a video that highlighted the milestones of a career that dated back to the late 1960s.

The Organisasyon ng Pilipinong Mang-aawit, represented by vice president for external affairs Noel Cabangon, handed Chan a special plaque of recognition for his achievements.