The bamboo organ of Las Piñas, a city located at the southern part of the national capital region, is an organ almost entirely made of bamboo. Only the horizontal trumpet stops are made from metal. The organ and the Church are a tourist destination for both local and foreign tourists. Their builder, the Augustinian Recollect Diego Cera, was practically a born scientist, chemist, architect, community leader, organist and builder of organs.
Having previously built organs in Manila, Fr. Cera chose to use almost exclusively bamboo for this instrument. The choice may be due to practical and esthetic reasons, since the bamboo was abundant. This Augustinian Recollect began to build the organ in 1816, while the Church was under construction. The Church was finished in 1819 and the organ in 1821, although without the trumpet stops. He completed it in 1824 when he decided to use metal for the trumpet stops succumbing to the fact that the bamboo was not for that.
Earthquakes and typhoons damaged the Church and the organ, and Fr. Cera became the first restorer of the organ. But through the years, the natural disasters continued causing havoc in the instrument leaving it unusable.
The Church of Las Piñas and its bamboo organ were built by the Augustininan Recollect Friar Diego Cera of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. In 1973 the organ was shipped to Bonn (Germany) for the Johannes Klais Orgelbau company to save it. At the same time a complete restoration of the Church was carried out in order to bring it to its original state.
The organ was returned to the Philippines in March 1975. On May 5 of the same year the only bamboo organ of the world sounded again, thus birthing the International Bamboo Organ Festival (IBOF). In 2003 the National Historical Institute of the Philippines declared the bamboo organ of Las Piñas as a national cultural heritage for its uniqueness and transcendence.
Festival
With the objective of commemorating the return of the Bamboo Organ –Philippine national treasure–, the festival was organized starting in 1975 and bécame an annual event participated in by international artists, with the Church Organ as the main instrument. Since 1992, professor Armando Salarza has been the regular organist and artistic director of the IBOF.
The 36th IBOF features the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The artists who will showcase their musical prowess will be the concert organists Luc Ponet of Belgium and Armando Salarza of the Philippines; the Philippine choirs such as the Las Piñas Boys Choir, Hail Mary the Queen Children´s Choir, University of the East Chorale y Imusicapella. They will be accompanied by the trumpet player soloist Guido Segers of Belgium and the flutist Rafael Leone of Austria, aside from the Festival Orchestra and the directors of the main orchestra Joel Navarro and Eudenice Palaruan.