Lucrecia Roces Kasilag

Lucrecia Roces Kasilag (31 August 1918 – 16 August 2008) was a Filipino composer and pianist. She is particularly known for incorporating indigenous Filipino instruments into orchestral productions. Biography Lucrecia “King” Roces Kasilag was born in San Fernando, La Union Philippines, the third of the six children of Marcial Kasilag Sr., a civil engineer, and his wife Asuncion Roces Ganancial, a violinist and a violin teacher. She was Kasilag’s first solfeggio teacher. The second was Doña Concha Cuervo, who was a strict Spanish woman. Kasilag later studied under Doña Pura Villanueva, during which time performed her first public piece, Felix Mendelssohn’s May Breezes, at a student recital when she was ten years old. During World War II, she took up composition, and on 1 December 1945, she performed her own compositions in a concert at Philippine Women’s University. From 1946 to 1947, Kasilag taught at the University of the Philippines’ Conservatory of Music and worked as secretary-registrar at Philippines Women’s University. She completed a Bachelor of Music in 1949, and then attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, studying theory with Allen I. McHose and compo