In True Jazz Fashion, Gab Lazaro Is Ready to Improvise

It’s 7 p.m. on a Friday, and the hidden No Entry Cocktail Club in BGC is still waiting to happen. Once you enter the parking lot door marked “Staff Only,” walk down the stairs and peer through the blinds, you’ll find Gab Lazaro and the No Entry Jazz Group under the bar’s red lights, patiently setting up amid the guests’ chatter.

While the in-house band was always a rotating quartet, tonight’s lineup had never played together before, and there was only an hour before they were set to go on. Lazaro, trumpet in hand, was surprisingly calm, cheerful even, because he was playing with close friends, and the excitement of that prospect eased all of his nerves.

A trumpeter for five years and a self-proclaimed jazz lover for almost ten, Lazaro went abroad to study music and came back home to integrate himself into the local culture. His learner’s mindset never really left, either, even after all that he’s accomplished. At 27, he finds himself between two generations: players who have spent over a decade building the Philippine jazz community and younger musicians barely out of their teens who are already inspiring him. Some of them were playing alongside him that night.

“I think my friends have been riding on this for over a decade; they’ve been working on this stuff passionately, consistently,” Lazaro told GQ Philippines. “In a lot of ways, I’m kind of a newbie in this whole scene.”

His gig at No Entry began when La Crema played at the cocktail bar’s soft opening. His friend, Lucas Floyd, invited him to sit in as a trumpet player. One of the owners, Marco Baluyut, liked what he heard from Lazaro that night and walked up to him, asking if he had his own jazz band that could play at the bar.

“I’m part of a collective, [and] we call ourselves Merienda Jazz. We can play some stuff for you next time if you’re interested,” he told Baluyut, who ended up really liking the vibe.

But what kept him a loyal patron and performer at the speakeasy was the way it supported the people who crafted its atmosphere. “They pay the musicians well, they feed us, they’re doing it right; that’s all I can say,” he said.

A well-paying gig at a venue with a distinct identity is incredibly hard to come by, especially in the Philippine music scene. Lazaro prefers the intimacy of performing in this speakeasy. There’s no amplification, which means it’s all on him and the power of his trumpet to cut through. “I kind of tend to gravitate towards those spaces because I don’t use a microphone,” Lazaro said. “I can just play the horn raw.”

That night, the No Entry band set aside their usual straight swing and instead played a fusion set that silenced the whole room. The set moved from a rendition of “Didn’t Cha Know” by the queen of neo-soul, Erykah Badu, before finishing with a flamenco tune.

Lazaro is no stranger to dive bars and loud music. Outside of playing with bands, he is a solo artist who goes by Gabriel Lazaro. He describes his music as a mix of punk, post-rock, and jazz. “Sometimes I scream when I play my songs,” he said, a description that sounds worlds away from tonight’s mellower setlist.

Those two parts of his life have yet to meet. He says he’s still working out how his original music and his love of improvised music fit together. “I’m finding the marriage between the two,” he says. “I think I’m finding it along the way right now.”

Lazaro also plays in other groups, like the previously mentioned Merienda Jazz collective. He has also played with Project Yazz since returning home from college, a collective that fuses FilipinoFilipinoThe national language of the Philippines, widely used for communication, education, media, and culture.Go to Filipino Glossary folk sounds with jazz.

In true jazz fashion, he describes his career as improvisational: gig by gig, going with the flow. But he doesn’t pretend that everyone in the scene can afford that kind of uncertainty. “A lot of my friends from this community don’t have that luxury,” he explains, “but I really think I’m able to do that because I come from a place of a lot of privilege; I’m very lucky in that sense.”

Part of that background is his father, actor Ronnie Lazaro, who was part of the Batang Quiapo ensemble cast and had his own history with music through his membership in a glee club and his experience fronting a rock band.

Lazaro, who also made his acting debut in 2026’s Ganito, Ganyan, Ganoon, said he never really saw his father as an artist when he was younger, but appreciates him as one now that he’s older. More than anything, he appreciates that his father never imposed any of these views on him. “I think that’s because he’s a real artist; he gets it,” he says.

Ask Lazaro about the jazz scene, and he’ll preface his answer by telling you what he isn’t. “I don’t feel like I’m an authority to speak on this,” he says. “I’m more of an observer, and I’m a jazz lover.” He believes the true authoritative figures are his friends and peers who have worked tirelessly to foster and maintain the scene for over a decade.

Still, he sees a community that is relatively young and continues to grow through inclusion. “No matter what background you come from, a lot of the people that I’ve worked with—older generation, younger generation—they’re all very encouraging of people getting into this music.”

For Lazaro, that openness is part of jazz’s appeal: anyone, regardless of background or instrument, can come in, play along, and find a community.

He’s quick to name names: groups like D-Trio and Show Me Your Kung Fu, a project led by FilipinoFilipinoThe national language of the Philippines, widely used for communication, education, media, and culture.Go to Filipino Glossary jazz guitarist and composer Joaquin Reyes. He also shouts out upright bassist Dave Harder and drummer Ray Vinoya, whom he calls OGs. “We’re all on their shoulders,” he says.

Out of all of them, though, young players impress him the most. Angelo Gabriel Lapuz, the guitarist who joined him that Friday night, also plays for Playtest, a group that performs live renditions of Mario Kart tracks while guests play the game, complete with sound effects. Most of its members are between 19 and 21 years old.

“When I was that young, I wasn’t doing cool shit like that,” he says, half joking, half frustrated. “I don’t know where they get it from, but they’re fucking world-class.”

When asked what else the jazz scene needs, he takes a moment to think before admitting he isn’t sure. “We’re already doing all the right steps to put ourselves on the map,” he explains. “We’re doing a thing, right? This is a thing. So let’s just build this thing.”