Wish Date, the concert series periodically mounted by KDR Music House, has leveled up. Its most recent staging was just last Sunday night, 1 October, at the humongous Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, QC, which used to be the biggest indoor events venue in the country until the Philippine Arena was put up by the Iglesia ni Cristo in Bocaue, Bulacan in 2014. It was the first time ever that KDRMH held a Wish Date show at the Big Dome. Before the Araneta Coliseum, the concert’s biggest venue was the Mall of Asia Arena last August.
The Wish Date series has become famous for its evolved format: a concert that flows out from a movie that tells a bittersweet love story narrated by a disc jockey who calls himself Dr. Clark. The first Wish Date concerts were just performances detached from each other. There were no filmed stories that somehow linked the songs with each other.
This Dr. Clark hosts a Wish Radio 107.5FM evening program called Wish Date where he reads letters supposedly from listeners who have deeply sentimental love stories to tell.
KDRMH is the entertainment and production arm of Wish radio, headed by broadcaster Daniel Razon who is now widely known as Kuya Daniel Razon. He is the nephew of the late televangelist Eli Soriano, whose Dating Daan religious group owns and operates UNTV and eventually also Wish 107.5 FM.
Grandiose event
Last Sunday’s event at the Big Dome, billed as Wish Date: Memoir, was grandiose because some segments of the movie were acted live on stage. In the past, the entire movie was shown on screen and the actors came out on stage only during the curtain call.
This was only the second time that some actors in the movie within the concert were asked to perform in person at the concert venue. The first was at Wish Date: Solstice held at Mall of Asia Arena, with actors Enzo Pineda, Aura Mariano and Jun-Jun Quintana performed some segments.
Last Sunday at the Big Dome, two well-known actors showed up on stage and performed live some climactic scenes: Alice Dixson and Louella de Cordova. The full-house audience was delighted watching the two seasoned actors performing in front of them.
Spacious stage
With the Araneta Coliseum’s spacious stage, everyone involved in the show did their thing right on stage and not in some inconspicuous areas, as what happened in previous concerts presented in medium-sized venues with limited stage space. The band and the back-up singers were prominently visible to the admiring full-house crowd at the Big Dome.
The singers were R&B Queen Kyla, cool acoustic vocalist TJ Monterde, the alt-rock band Moonstars88, songsmith Peniel and rising young singer Hakki (the last two both females). They were joined by the KDRMH chorale in certain segments of the concert, thus helping those numbers achieve grandeur.
Kyla was overwhelming in her singing. She belted out Freddie Mercury’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Hanggang Ngayon” and five to six other numbers.
Peniel sang “Both Sides” now and Hakki did “The Only Exception.”
Aside from Kyla with her vocal pyrotechnics, the most applauded singer was Maychelle Baay as the guitar-strumming lead vocalist of the band Moonstar88. She, of course, sang the iconic “Turete,” first popularized by the band’s original lead vocalist Acel Bisa. Baay was good at encouraging the audience to sing along with her.
TJ Monterde was warmly applauded when he sang his own compositions, including the one he said he wrote for his wife, the R&B siren KZ Tandingan. The song was Ikaw at Ako. Monterde was the concert’s most laidback and relaxed singer.
We seem to be the only country where an entire live concert is structured to flow out from a film. And we owe that novel experience to KDR Music House. We wish, though, that one day the love story highlighted in the film would not involve the death of one lover.