From Broadway To Disney: Lea Salonga Took The MPO Stage — Her Brother Held The Baton
Filipino Broadway legend Lea Salonga performed three nights with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) at Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS (DFP), in a concert conducted by her younger brother Gerard — spanning Miss Saigon, Disney princesses, Sondheim and the Bee Gees.
- Lea Salonga performed a career-spanning concert with the MPO, with her brother Gerard conducting and arranging every piece on the night.
- Despite being unwell beforehand, Salonga performed flawlessly, closing with Whitney Houston and inviting the audience to stand and dance.
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Lea Salonga stood on the stage of Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS (DFP) last weekend and sang the songs that two generations of audiences grew up with — and the man raising the baton in front of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) was her younger brother.
The three-night concert, From Broadway to Disney: Lea Salonga with the MPO, ran from 24 to 27 September, with her brother Gerard Salonga serving as conductor and arranger for a programme that moved from Rodgers and Hammerstein to the Bee Gees to Stephen Sondheim without apology.
The setlist read less like a concert programme and more like a career autobiography.
It opened with a Lea Salonga Overture, moved through Pure Imagination and A Million Dreams, then arrived at the songs that defined her: the Miss Saigon Medley, A Whole New World, Reflection, I Dreamed a Dream, and Defying Gravity — the last of which Salonga recorded live in Manila in 2019 and has since become a signature of her concert tours.
The Disney Princess Medley drew from The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and Pocahontas. Salonga is the singing voice behind two of Disney’s most recognised heroines — Princess Jasmine in Aladdin (1992) and Fa Mulan in Mulan (1998). The Walt Disney Company named her a Disney Legend.
Three Sondheim pieces appeared across the programme — Being Alive, Everybody Says Don’t and By the Sea — more than any other single composer on the night.
The Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive also appeared.
The MPO programme notes described it as a blue-collar survival anthem; the audience could agree.
The Conductor In The Room
Gerard has held the position of Resident Conductor of the MPO since 2019.
He arranged every piece performed on the night.
His earliest musical memory with his sister, he said in the concert programme, was playing chopsticks on the piano together at age four.
His first professional appearance with her came at age seven, when the tape deck carrying her backing tracks failed mid-performance, and she called him in from the wings.
And that was that. I have been playing for her ever since.
He described working with Lea as both comfortable and demanding.
We not only complement one another but also challenge each other — not in an adversarial way, but because we expect a lot from the other person and ourselves.
On her voice, he said: “Her ear understands harmony, and she has great rhythm. She is always fully prepared.”
Who Is Lea Salonga
Lea, 55, made her international breakthrough at 17 when she auditioned in Manila for the 1989 West End production of Miss Saigon.
She won the Laurence Olivier Award in 1990 — the highest honour in British theatre — and the Tony Award in 1991, the American equivalent, becoming the first Asian woman to win the latter.
No Asian woman had done it in the Tony’s 45-year history at that point.
She returned to Broadway as Éponine and later Fantine in Les Misérables, appeared in the Tony Award-winning 2018 revival of Once on This Island, and most recently starred in Old Friends, a stage tribute to the late Stephen Sondheim, widely considered the greatest composer-lyricist in Broadway history.
In 2026, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — the same year Malaysia’s own Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh, who became the first Asian woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, marked her own milestone on the same stretch of pavement.
She stars in and leads the soundtrack of Forgotten Island, a DreamWorks animated feature that marks the first time a major Hollywood studio has built an animated film entirely around Filipino culture, folklore and mythology — with Lea, the Philippines’ most recognised voice in global entertainment, at its centre.
Why The MPO Programmed This
The MPO, which gave its inaugural performance at DFP on 17 August, 1998, has in recent years expanded its programming beyond classical repertoire into film music, pop and Broadway.
The concert’s programme notes described the collaboration as “a meeting point between the worlds of classical music, Broadway and Disney,” and positioned it as part of a broader effort to make the orchestra accessible to audiences of all ages.
For three nights, it appeared to work.
Lea told the audience during the concert that she had been unwell in the days leading up to the performances.
On stage, there was no evidence of it.
Between songs, she spoke openly about her life — including the role that started it all: Miss Saigon, the 1989 West End production that launched her from Manila to the world stage and earned her both an Olivier and a Tony Award before she turned 20.
She closed the night with Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) — and asked the audience to stand, dance and sing along.
At DFP, a hall built for symphonies and silence, they did.
The woman who once sang A Whole New World for a Disney film in 1992 sang it again in Kuala Lumpur in 2026 — this time with a full orchestra, her brother counting her in, and a head cold that apparently did not get the memo.
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