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Gabriel's new adventure

IN JUNE 2008, Gary Valenciano's son Gabriel will leave the Philippines to take up schooling in the US. This was revealed by Gab himself in an interview after the recent launch of ASAP Music and Star Records’ Supahdance album.

Gab, 19, plans to attend a school called the Musicians' Institute in Los Angeles. He'll be taking up three one-year courses: the Recording Artist Programme, Film Directing and Music Engineering. Although his mother Angeli Pangilinan was initially reluctant to let him go — she had asked Gab to consider pushing his departure back three years, or to 2010 — he pointed out that if he waited, he might be too old to pursue the opportunities that drove him to study there in the first place.

This will of course mean giving up his career here. A gifted dancer like his father Gary, Gab — who is called ‘Pure Power’ (just as his dad is Mr. Pure Energy) — is one of the artists featured in the Supahdance segment of ASAP, which recently became an album. The album, which was co-produced by ASAP Music and Star Records, features 10 dance tracks penned by Filipino composers and performed by Filipino singers. Dance steps were created especially for the songs, one of which is Shake Ya Thang, which Gab dances to. He performed the song at the launch and on a recent episode of Boy and Kris.

“Of course, I'm really going to miss my friends and my family here, and all this,” says Gab, “but I'm giving up my career here for a much bigger cause. Plus in a way, it’s going to be an adventure for me, and I’m excited about that”.

Prior to making the decision to go to LA to study, Gab was enrolled at the College of St. Benilde, where he was taking up Music Production. Although Gab loves music, what he was studying wasn't really connecting with him. Finally, it came to a point where he had to drop out of school. He spent two semesters there before deciding to stop. There was no passion, no inspiration,” he says. “I was longing to do something more.”

We ask if that longing was born of the desire to be identified as someone other than simply Gary V's son? “I'm always going to be his son, no matter what,” replied Gab, who, of the three Valenciano children, is the one who looks most like his father and who obviously inherited Gary's talent for dancing. In fact, watching Gab dance is like watching Gary V when he was Gab’s age. The similarities that father and son share are uncanny.