Lifetime Achievement Awardees

Bobby Enriquez  was born on May 20, 1943 in Bacolod City, in the Philippines as Roberto Delprado Yulo Enriquez. Enriquez was a child prodigy who started playing piano at the age of two and began his professional career aged 12. He ran away from home at 15 and for the next nine years toured Southeast Asia playing jazz piano.

In 1987 while broadcasting her weekly show "The Swing Years and Beyond" on the National Public Radio station KUOW in Seattle, WA, Cynthia Doyon had this to say:

   Born on the island of Negros just north of Mindanao. his first love was the piano but his mother wanted him to concentrate on schoolwork. he started his professional career as a musician at the age of 14, sneaking out his second floor bedroom window at night to play gigs and when his mother found out what he was doing at night she shut down the piano and told him to concentrate on homework. So he ran away from home and went to Manila. Once in Manila, he joined various jazz groups and from there he played in Taipei and Hong Kong where he met such jazz lumineries as Mel Torme', Lionel Hampton, Tito Puente, and Chico Hamilton. And eventually he landed a major gig at the famed Golden Dragon Lounge in Honolulu, and while in Hawaii he became Don Ho's orchestra leader and musical director.

In 1967, he arrived in Los Angeles and played briefly for the The Sunspots, before moving to Hawaii where he became Don Ho's musical director. He also performed with Amapola Cabase. Alto saxophonist Richie Cole discovered him there and asked him to join his band. Enriquez participated in several Richie Cole albums in the 1980s, most notably Alive! at the Village Vanguard and the groundbreaking The Madman Meets The Wild Man.

He recorded a number of astonishing jazz albums for Crescendo Records in the 1980s and was known as "the Wildman" for his unpredictable yet engrossing piano style.

He is not the Bobby Enriquez whose name appears in the Internet Movie Database as playing a bartender in the 1988 movie Kansas (film) – this is a different artist.

New York Times critic John S. Wilson wrote:

    Mr. Enriquez has such a lively and attractive mixture of melodic appeal, rhythmic excitement and imaginative ability that he could be for the 1980s what Erroll Garner was to the 1950's.
 
Enriquez' children with Jeanann Cortez are in order from the eldest - Melody, Melissa, Larissa, Robert Jean and Annalissa. He later remarried to Barbara Enriquez and had children named Alexander, Tatiana and John Robert who wasn't born when his father died in 1996. All his children inherited their father's musical gifts.

Enriquez became a born-again Christian in 1993 and openly spoke of how God "changed his life". He also played wonderful "jazz-style" hymns during church events in his local church in Bayonne, New Jersey. He died on August 6, 1996.

Born on April 22, 1921, Peña was surrounded by music as a child.  His mother, Rosario Velarde Matias, a schoolteacher, studied voice at the University of the Philippines and it was from her that he learned the solfeggio.  His father, Gregorio Cid Peña,  played the violin, and his grandfather was handy with the guitar. Apart from genetics, Peña had the good fortune of growing up in Malabon, famous for its musicians and marching bands.  His mother died when he was 11 years old. His father had discouraged Peña from studying music, hoping he would take up law, medicine or some other “respectable profession.”  By then, it was  too late.  A self-taught musician, Peña read books on musical theory and composition.

Just before WWII, Peña wrote his first original jazz composition.  In his youth, he also wrote kundimans for the young women he would be courting.  “Musicians are romantic,” he says “it’s part of our music.”  The outbreak of the war put a temporary halt to music-making, but not for long.  When life returned to normal after the war, Peña became one of the most sought-after arrangers in Manila.  He had also switched from guitar to bass.  This led to writing orchestral background music for LVN Pictures. This, in turn further kindled Peña’s interest in classical composition.  In 1956, Peña formed a big band for the Upsilon Sigma Phi’s traditional concert at the University of the Philippines. He decided to write something special for the occasion, and the result was “Bagbagtulambing,” a landmark in Filipino music.  In 1959, the University of Santo Tomas launched a national symphonic composition contest open to all Filipino composers.  Peña’s entry “Igorot Rhapsody” won the first prize the following year.  Since then, Peña moved effortlessly between the jazz and classical worlds, sometimes, straddling them.  In the mid-1960s, during his 3-year stint in Hong Kong, he earned a Licentiate with the Royal School of Music in London, which is equivalent to a music degree.   His biography and works are cited in the Encyclopedia of Philippine Music and Arts, Cultural Center of the Philippines.

In 1969 Peña auditioned for the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra and was immediately accepted as bassist and later as arranger. He would spend the next 28 years in Hawaii.  As farewell homage, the Manila Symphony Orchestra performed his “Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra.”  In Honolulu, Peña continued to write his own music. In 1981, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Filipino presence in Hawaii, the Honolulu Symphony premiered his “Concerto for Jazz Quartet and Orchestra” with an all-star Filipino jazz quartet.  In 1982 Cultural Center of the Philippines performed a concert of his classical works in honor of the Philippine expatriate artist.  During his absence from Manila, jazz groups “back home” continued to play his compositions, and the seeds that he had sown began to bear fruit. A new generation of Filipino musicians is discovering the composer.  Since his “homecoming,” Peña has been teaching scholars in Double Bass as an adjunct faculty at the University of the Philippines and collaborating with the UP Jazz Ensemble on a number of concerts.

Although music remains a consuming passion, Peña is also very much involved in spiritual development. Peña believes that “since all music emanates from the Divine, there is really no barrier between the musician and the seeker.  Even in his 80s, Angel Peña is still showing the way.

Mr. Toti Fuentes, the Chicago-based pianist, arranger, conductor, has performed with Sergio Mendes and Brazil 88, Aretha Franklin, and Jeffrey Osborne, and conducted the North Dakota Symphony Orchestra and the Louisville Pops Symphony Orchestra. Fuentes, who has lived in the United States for many years, admits his true passion has always been Brazilian music. "My heart always searches for a way to make Brazilian music -- and my obsession with Sergio Mendes is a case in point. He was a big challenge for me since 1966. I would meet him in person more than 20 years later in 1988 and I shared the stage with him. It was an honor for me to be face-to-face with a legend."

Rare for a professional performer, Toti Fuentes lived clean all his life. He is said to neither smoke nor drink. No nights out, either -- unless he performs. But in a horrible irony, he was diagnosed with a rare gastro-intestinal tumor about two years ago and was given a few months to live. His recovery was nothing short of a miracle, and his presence brings new meaning to the phrase "living legend." Fuentes celebrates his life pursuing his greatest passion: music!

Mr. Emil Mijares, also known as the "grandfather of Philippines jazz," has written and produced numerous television and radio jingles from the 1960s through the late 1980s for major agencies in Manila. He was the musical director for the first Metro Manila Pop Festival in 1978, the First Philippine Jazz Festival in 1985, and for various Philippine productions. He has won the Cecil Award for Best Musical Director (1978), Aliw Award for Best Jazz Performer (1983) and Best Musical Director (1985). Mr. Mijares was Asia Magazine's pick os one of Asia's Top Jazz Artists (1971) and in 2004 was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by Celebrity Chronicle of Los Angeles.