Gerard Salonga is one of the Philippines’ most accomplished musical directors, conductors and arrangers. A multi-platinum record producer as well, he has worked with the country’s biggest musical artists, including Lea Salonga, Regine Velasquez, Gary Valenciano and Martin Nievera.

After graduating from the Ateneo De Manila University in 1994, Gerard attended Berklee College of Music in Boston two years later, majoring in Contemporary Writing and Production, and studied with Donny Nolan, Grammy-winner Richard Evans, George Monseur and David Callahan. He graduated summa cum laude and received the Contemporary Writing and Production Achievement Award that same year. After graduation he worked in Los Angeles as an orchestrator and music copyist at Sony Pictures, participating on major album productions and motion pictures.

Upon returning to the Philippines in late 1999, he instantly became one of the most sought-after arrangers and musical directors. His productions have won him numerous awards, such as the Promax World Silver Award in New York for best use of music with or without lyrics in 2004 and 2005; the Aliw Award (live performance awards) for Best Musical Director in 2002, 2003 and 2005 and in 2006 the Awit Award (recording industry) for Best Musical Arrangement 2006.

He spent two years as arranger and resident conductor of the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra and has guest conducted the Peace Philharmonic Philippines, which he led in the ASEAN Summit gala in Cebu last year, the Philippine Youth Symphonic Band and the Philippine Philharmonic, among others. Now Gerard is the music director and conductor of FILharmoniKa, the orchestra-in-residence of Carmel House Studios. He has released two critically acclaimed recordings with the orchestra. Their third recording has just been released in January 2008.

Recently Gerard has been discovering his talents in the areas of scoring to film and video. His work is heard on several film and animation projects such as Journey with Terry, Jippy and Shelldon and The Inheritance. This year Gerard is scheduled to compose and conduct two large symphonic scores for the Philippines’ first full-length 3-D animated releases, take on musical direction of major pop concerts in Manila and lead FILharmoniKa through its first full concert season.