Nass­er Khan

En­er­getic and in com­mand is the best way to char­ac­ter­ize the tall, shaven-head Jes­sel Mur­ray, artis­tic di­rec­tor/con­duc­tor of the T&T Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra (NSSO). Mur­ray and the NSSO were re­cent­ly fea­tured at the Pres­i­dent's an­nu­al Car­ols by Can­dle­light Con­cert at the band­stand in the botan­i­cal gar­dens, Port-of-Spain. Those in at­ten­dance were treat­ed to the melo­di­ous sound of our na­tion­al in­stru­ment that re­ver­ber­at­ed sweet­ly in the evening breeze that kept the pro­ceed­ings cool and en­joy­able.

His full-time job, though, is se­nior lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, and the head of the De­part­ment of Cre­ative Arts. He al­so di­rects the UWI Arts Chorale, co-di­rects the UWI Steel, and teach­es ad­vanced singing and pi­ano as well as cours­es in choral meth­ods, in­clud­ing con­duct­ing.

Mur­ray is a well-trav­elled con­duc­tor (USA, Guyana, Suri­name, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Japan, Chi­na) un­der whose lead­er­ship the NSSO has cham­pi­oned the orig­i­nal works of lo­cal com­posers in­clud­ing that of Jit Sama­roo, Ray Hol­man and Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, as well as ca­lyp­so arrange­ments of many of the mas­ters and clas­si­cal tran­scrip­tions.

Among his many awards, the UWI Arts Chorale and Must Come See Pro­duc­tions (MCS) have been award­ed 14 Cacique awards over the last five years, in­clud­ing awards for Best Pro­duc­tion in 2007 (Oliv­er! ). Mr Mur­ray him­self was award­ed a Cacique for Best Mu­sic Di­rec­tor in 2006 for Fid­dler on the Roof. He is both the chair­man and mu­sic di­rec­tor of MCS.

Mur­ray has con­duct­ed many of the choral mas­ter­works with the UWI Arts Chorale and the UWI Steel­band, in­clud­ing Orff's Carmi­na Bu­rana, Bern­stein's Chich­ester Psalms, the Faur� Re­quiem, and the J S Bach Mag­ni­fi­cat. With the Na­tion­al Sin­fo­nia Or­ches­tra (NSO) he has con­duct­ed many of the or­ches­tral mas­ter­works, in­clud­ing the com­plete Beethoven Sym­pho­ny No 5 as well as the Schu­bert Sym­pho­ny No 5, the Rach­mani­nov Rhap­sody on a Theme of Pa­gani­ni and Beethoven Pi­ano Con­cer­to No 3 with con­cert pi­anist Sothy­Paul-Du­raisamy, as well as the Grieg Pi­ano Con­cer­to with Sean Suther­land.

He has a deep in­ter­est in mu­sic the­atre and has been the mu­sic di­rec­tor for over 20 pro­duc­tions in the USA, Japan and Trinidad, in­clud­ing ten pro­duc­tions for Must Come See Pro­duc­tions (MCS), The Sound of Mu­sic; Dis­ney's Beau­ty and the Beast; and El­ton John and Tim Rice's Ai­da. The UWI Arts Chorale and MCS have re­ceived 14 Cacique awards over the last five years.

Tell us about your ear­ly days grow­ing up.

I grew up in a house in Mt Lam­bert, where I cur­rent­ly re­side. Ac­tu­al­ly, I was born in that house via mid­wife de­liv­ery.

What schools/in­sti­tu­tions did you at­tend, in­clud­ing pri­ma­ry and post-sec­ondary?

I at­tend­ed Mt Lam­bert RC and St Xavier's Pri­vate school (where I com­plet­ed my Com­mon En­trance), then went on to St Mary's Col­lege, and fi­nal­ly suc­cess­ful­ly re­peat­ed my A-Lev­els at Sixth Form Sec­ondary. Af­ter that, I re­turned to St Mary's Col­lege to teach for two years in the sci­ences. Even­tu­al­ly, I stud­ied at Tem­ple Uni­ver­si­ty, in Philadel­phia, where I at­tained a Bach­e­lor's in Mu­sic Ed­u­ca­tion (pi­ano with voice) and then a Mas­ter's in Choral Con­duct­ing (with ad­vanced Pi­ano Ac­com­pa­ny­ing). Fur­ther to that, I par­tic­i­pat­ed in two or­ches­tral con­duct­ing work­shops in Ore­gon and Con­necti­cut.

How did you be­come so in­volved with the steel­pan and what are some of your ear­ly fond mem­o­ries of play­ing the steel­pan?

I be­came in­volved with steel­pan in two ways: in 1982 Desmond Wait­he in­tro­duced me to ar­rang­ing a clas­si­cal piece with the Trin­toc Sun Val­ley in Point Fortin for a na­tion­al steel com­pe­ti­tion. It was my first mem­o­ry and it is still spe­cial to me.

Then I did not have any in­volve­ment since I left the coun­try in 1983. How­ev­er, in 1999 I was teach­ing at a high school in Mass­a­chu­setts (Amherst Re­gion­al High School) and the then de­part­ment head of mu­sic and I de­cid­ed to start a steel­band there. So, I flew to Trinidad to un­der­take a ten-day in­ten­sive work­shop with Ma­jor Edouard Wade. I then re­turned to the US and start­ed that en­sem­ble which is still per­form­ing to this day.

How did you be­come so in­volved with the NSSO?

I be­came in­volved first with the G-Pans in 2007 when I was in­vit­ed to lead the team of play­ers to de­but the G-Pans at the UWI. Af­ter that suc­cess­ful ex­pe­ri­ence, I was ap­point­ed as the artis­tic di­rec­tor of the un­named na­tion­al group which be­came the NSSO.

How do you bal­ance things giv­en the many hats you wear?

It is not easy to bal­ance be­ing a head of de­part­ment, a lec­tur­er (which in­cludes in­di­vid­ual teach­ing), and a per­former (which in­cludes the di­rec­tor­ship of three en­sem­bles–the NSSO, the UWI Arts Chorale and the UWI Steel.

I may be adding back soon di­rec­tor­ship of the Na­tion­al Sin­fo­nia Or­ches­tra and the mu­si­cal di­rec­tion of Must Come See Pro­duc­tions. The 'se­cret' is to rigid­ly sched­ule my ac­tiv­i­ties and to be dis­ci­plined in the ap­proach to plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion of the pri­or­i­ties of each ac­tiv­i­ty. My work at the UWI is pri­ma­ry but the bulk of the teach­ing is sea­son­al dur­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic year. The ad­min­is­tra­tive work is con­tin­u­ous (and some­times oner­ous) but re­ward­ing when one views the out­comes. I have to al­ways make sure that the work of the NSSO is bal­anced with oth­er mat­ters and so far, I have been suc­cess­ful ex­cept for the odd clash. When the clash­es come I make the best de­ci­sion at the time.

Your fu­ture plans?

All of my fu­ture plans re­volve around up­grad­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty of the en­sem­bles which I di­rect and those of my cur­rent and past stu­dents. This is not meant to be serv­ing, how­ev­er, but to in­crease the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the groups as fu­ture pro­fes­sion­al groups which will pro­vide mean­ing­ful and sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment as part of a larg­er arts in­dus­try. I have been suc­cess­ful in es­tab­lish­ing my­self with­in the arts in­dus­try (with lots of as­sis­tance from many per­sons). It is my mis­sion to as­sist as many per­sons as pos­si­ble to do the same and to join (even in­flu­ence) larg­er na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tions about the es­tab­lish­ment of a vi­able arts ex­pe­ri­ence past the recre­ation­al.

What do you see for the fu­ture of the steel­band move­ment? Any sug­ges­tions?

The steel­band move­ment has to move out of its con­stant pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with Panora­ma and to em­brace the many oth­er is­sues in­volv­ing its sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Fail­ure to do so will al­low the fast grow­ing sec­tors out­side of Trinidad to over­take us. I could go on in de­tail about sug­ges­tions, how­ev­er the main sug­ges­tion is that the move­ment has to be open to bold de­ci­sions and risk-tak­ing in many ar­eas not lim­it­ed to di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of reper­toire, lit­er­a­cy, and the crit­i­cal ar­eas of in­stru­ment re­search, in­no­va­tion and in­stru­ment care.

What in­spires you to do what you do, and what mo­ti­vates you to put forth your great­est ef­forts?

I am dri­ven to suc­ceed at what I do. Al­so, I am pres­sured (in the best way pos­si­ble) by the faith of those who trust me to lead them in the var­i­ous en­sem­bles that I di­rect.

What makes for a re­al­ly good job of con­duct­ing?

There are a num­ber of fac­tors. One has to be a teacher cum psy­chol­o­gist to con­vince oth­ers of one's mu­si­cal in­tent; this has to be done with­out with firm­ness and hu­mour but no tantrums. Al­so, one has al­so has to be a strong mu­si­cian who re­search­es reper­toire and pos­sess­es a knack for com­bin­ing reper­toire to uni­fied pro­grammes. Fi­nal­ly, on the podi­um it helps to have strong tech­nique with a cer­tain shrewd type of show­man­ship that does not over­shad­ow the ef­forts of the en­sem­ble.

What's the most un­ex­pect­ed thing that has ever hap­pened to you while con­duct­ing?

Hm­mm. Per­haps, when my cum­mer­bund slipped off as I stepped on to the podi­um in Mass­a­chu­setts! I have al­ways checked it since then. The on­ly oth­er time was when I was con­duct­ing a pit or­ches­tra for a mu­si­cal and the tech­ni­cians turned off all of the lights but the or­ches­tra man­aged to keep play­ing!

Of all your per­for­mances/pro­duc­tions which would you like a first-time view­er to ex­pe­ri­ence?

That is a dif­fi­cult one but cer­tain­ly, the one that re­mains in mem­o­ry is when the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra per­formed in 2013 in Mar­tinique. The NSSO played glo­ri­ous­ly and the re­ac­tion of the au­di­ence is one that we all shall nev­er for­get.

What ma­jor chal­lenges have you faced as an artis­tic di­rec­tor/con­duc­tor?

With Must Come See Pro­duc­tions the ma­jor chal­lenge has al­ways been about fi­nance to keep the in­sti­tu­tion on sound foot­ing. This fi­nan­cial chal­lenge is al­so not lim­it­ed to them but as well the chorale and the steel. With the NSSO, the ma­jor chal­lenges have been artis­tic and ad­min­is­tra­tive. One must con­stant­ly be com­mis­sion­ing reper­toire for the NSSO since there is not a body of lit­er­a­ture on which one can draw. Al­so, that en­sem­ble is draw­ing near­er to a per­ma­nent man­date but it has tak­en quite a while.

What is your great­est fear?

The non-com­ple­tion of my work and pass­ing it on to per­sons to take it for­ward.

Who was your hero grow­ing up (fic­tion­al or re­al or both) and why? And who do you ad­mire most to­day?

I great­ly ad­mired my late moth­er and strange­ly enough, the ad­mit­ted­ly ro­man­ti­cised char­ac­ter of the 'God­fa­ther' Vi­to Coreleone. Strange­ly enough, both of them be­lieved in tak­ing care of fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty, suc­cess against the odds, and rea­son­ing with per­sons past the point of pa­tience. I am a huge fan of the for­mer pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton who per­se­vered in pub­lic de­spite per­son­al dif­fi­cul­ty.

What dai­ly mot­to/cre­do do you live by...your recipe for suc­cess?

I am a big fan of crick­et and so I be­lieve that af­ter a cen­tu­ry that the next in­nings starts at ze­ro.

De­scribe your­self in two words, one be­gin­ning with J, the oth­er with M, the ini­tials of your name.

Ju­di­cious and mu­si­cal.