In the Car­ni­val home straight, while pa­n­yards stam­mer with in­tense stop start re­hearsals and fetes launch all out so­ca as­saults, a qui­eter rev­o­lu­tion, with its own Car­ni­val theme is un­der­way in a cham­ber mu­sic hall of the Port-of-Spain NA­PA. It's the fourth day of a week-long in­ten­sive work­shop of Act 1 of Jab Mo­lassie, a "mu­sic the­atre work" for ac­tors, dancers and in­stru­men­tal­ists, in two acts. Com­mis­sioned by the Cal­abash Foun­da­tion for the Arts, with mu­sic com­posed by Do­minique Le Gen­dre and li­bret­to penned by UTT mu­sic lec­tur­er Cait­lyn Kam­min­ga, Jab Mo­lassie will be staged in Trinidad lat­er this year, fol­low­ing a fur­ther Act 2 work­shop, be­fore em­bark­ing on an in­ter­na­tion­al tour.

If all this sounds high­ly am­bi­tious, one should re­mem­ber that it was Cal­abash which pre­sent­ed last year's con­cert of the works of Paraguayan gui­tarist/com­pos­er Au­gustin Bar­rios, fea­tur­ing Latin Amer­i­ca's lead­ing clas­si­cal gui­tarist Berta Ro­jas and Cuban mae­stro Paquito D'Rivera. The Bar­rios con­cert and the more re­cent Richard Tangyuk, Liam Teague recital alert­ed the lo­cal au­di­ence to the re­al­i­ty that the sup­posed 'west­ern' tra­di­tion of clas­si­cal mu­sic has a long-es­tab­lished Cre­ole pedi­gree, in terms of both com­posers and per­form­ers.Latin Amer­i­can and Cre­ole pop­u­lar and clas­si­cal mu­sic, have al­so in­flu­enced and shaped the west­ern canon. Guade­loupe's vir­tu­oso vi­o­lin­ist/com­pos­er the Cheva­lier St George was the toast of 18th cen­tu­ry Paris; Bizet fea­tured the Cuban Ha­banera in his opera Car­men and much more re­cent­ly Jab Mo­lassie com­pos­er, Trinida­di­an Do­minique Le Gen­dre, has pre­sent­ed works at that bas­tion of Eng­lish high cul­ture, Covent Gar­den's Roy­al Opera House.

The neat and pe­tite Le Gen­dre has been liv­ing mu­sic since her child­hood on Long Cir­cu­lar Road, when she'd spend hours lis­ten­ing un­der the pi­ano of her neigh­bour Olive Walke, founder of La Pe­tite Mu­si­cal choir, and her first pi­ano teacher. Her moth­er's grand­moth­er, a Pol­ish Jew­ess who mar­ried and set­tled in Mar­tinique, trained as a con­cert pi­anist and dur­ing reg­u­lar vis­its to her grand­par­ents in Mar­tinique, Le Gen­dre was ex­posed to tra­di­tion­al is­land forms (bigu­ine, mazur­ka, waltz) along with the jazz they in­spired in the hands of com­posers like pi­anist Mar­ius Coul­ti­er, all of which be­came part of her "child­hood mu­si­cal vo­cab­u­lary".In Trinidad, vis­its to the fam­i­ly's Mun­do Nue­vo coun­try es­tate in­tro­duced her to Cre­ole and Span­ish speak­ing vil­lagers, parang mu­si­cians and agri­cul­tur­al rit­u­als like danc­ing co­coa �"all part of our rhythm of life."

At Bish­op Anstey, she played in the ju­nior steel­band, be­gan gui­tar lessons aged nine and sub­se­quent­ly played gui­tar with the As­sump­tion church choir. As a teenag­er she worked with the Banyan Col­lec­tive, which then op­er­at­ed from its per­for­mance space in the Laird fam­i­ly house in Bel­mont. Af­ter A lev­els, she went to Paris to study mu­sic and com­po­si­tion, with the am­bi­tion of "writ­ing mu­sic for films." She soon dis­cov­ered "There were a lot of gaps in my mu­si­cal ed­u­ca­tion com­ing from Trinidad" so switch­ing from mu­si­col­o­gy to gui­tar, she in­vest­ed the next eight years "prac­tis­ing six to twelve hours dai­ly to catch up."While per­fect­ing her solf�ge (the­o­ry, sight read­ing, singing in pitch, ear train­ing) Le Gen­dre was en­cour­aged by her Span­ish clas­si­cal gui­tar teacher and "spir­i­tu­al mu­sic fa­ther", Ra­mon de Her­era to cher­ish her Cre­ole her­itage: "You're a Caribbean per­son, don't try to be a Eu­ro­pean. Come to the mu­sic as you are."

The ad­vice now seems su­per­flu­ous, as Le Gen­dre's ap­proach is rem­i­nis­cent of that of Leo Brouw­er, the Cuban gui­tarist/com­pos­er/con­duc­tor who was equal­ly at home con­duct­ing his na­tion­al sym­pho­ny or­ches­tra, im­pro­vis­ing on Ro­dri­go's Con­cer­to de Aranguez, a Vil­lalo­bos pre­lude, a Bea­t­les' hit or tak­ing flight with the ear­ly Afro-Cuban jazz su­per group Irakere.Like Brouw­er, Le Gen­dre is a risk tak­er, al­though for her: "It doesn't seem like a risk to me, it's what I do." The fa­cil­i­ty to move eas­i­ly be­tween gen­res (Jazz, opera, clas­si­cal, pop­u­lar, folk), seems char­ac­ter­is­tic of the best Cre­ole com­posers (maybe be­cause they're not hide­bound by tra­di­tion) and mu­si­cians. It's rare for a clas­si­cal­ly trained west­ern mu­si­cian to be able to im­pro­vise, just as many North Amer­i­can jazz play­ers (bar Gille­spie et al) come un­stuck when they at­tempt to jam with their Cre­ole coun­ter­parts, par­tic­u­lar­ly when deal­ing with Cuban polyrhythms.

Amongst her in­flu­ences she cites Bach, Bar­tok, Rav­el, De­bussy, Stravin­sky, Fla­men­co and most sur­pris­ing­ly�Joni Mitchell, "a key fig­ure along with Min­gus and Wayne Short­er in my sense of paint­ing pic­tures with words and mu­sic." Mitchell, for Le Gen­dre, is a fel­low risk tak­er; at one point the Amer­i­can used the Bu­run­di drum­mers on a com­po­si­tion, long be­fore World fu­sion was a catch phrase in mar­ket­ing.Be­fore and af­ter com­plet­ing her stud­ies Le Gen­dre's fo­cus was and still is com­pos­ing. "I don't play any­thing well, I'm crap," she con­cedes dis­arm­ing­ly be­fore ex­plain­ing why: "I spend all my time writ­ing." She be­gan at 15, com­pos­ing for school plays and ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions and while in France she wrote mu­sic for doc­u­men­taries, made by friends at film school. When an­oth­er Lon­don-based friend, To­bag­on­ian pup­peteer Jean Pearce wrote a chil­dren's play and asked her to write the mu­sic, she crossed the Chan­nel, tak­ing up fur­ther of­fers in Fringe the­atre.

A long pe­ri­od of dra­ma, Fringe the­atre and ra­dio dra­ma then fol­lowed, cul­mi­nat­ing in her col­lab­o­ra­tion with BBC ra­dio pro­duc­er Clive Brill, to whom she was in­tro­duced by com­pa­tri­ot Frances Ann Solomon. Brill was "in­to do­ing dif­fer­ent things with mu­sic" and ob­vi­ous­ly rec­og­nized a kin­dred spir­it.From 1996 through to 2000, the two worked on a huge­ly am­bi­tious au­dio project: The Com­plete Archangel Shake­speare �no less than the ra­dio adap­ta­tion of the com­plete, unabridged 38 plays of the Bard of Avon. Re­spon­si­ble for the mu­sic score, sourc­ing mu­si­cians and con­duct­ing record­ing ses­sions Le Gen­dre re­calls "I had more or less com­plete free­dom." Lead­ing British ac­tors like Sir John Giel­gud and Joseph Fi­ennes fea­tured in the nine plays a year pro­duced an­nu­al­ly to com­plete the project.

Her next en­deav­our, the 20-minute Rio Man­zanares Suite, marked her de­ci­sion to "con­cen­trate on pure mu­sic." This time she col­lab­o­rat­ed with her old friend Celia Reg­giani, with whom she'd trained. The duo spent a year in Reg­giani's Paris stu­dio pro­duc­ing the parang-in­spired suite for cu­a­tro, gui­tar, strings, clar­inet, bas­soon, per­cus­sion, flute and harp. With Reg­giani's back­ground in World Mu­sic and jazz and Le Gen­dre's propen­si­ty for risk, it's not sur­pris­ing that the suite "takes the theme and blows it open." The suite was per­formed at the pres­ti­gious Pur­cell Room in Lon­don in 2005 and paved the way for Le Gen­dre's tran­si­tion in­to the world of Opera.Re­al­is­ing she want­ed to "write more for voice", she was hap­py to get a call from com­pa­tri­ot Fe­lix Cross, Artis­tic Di­rec­tor of Ni­tro The­atre, part of the Roy­al Opera House's new cre­ative wing ROH2. Cross in­vit­ed her to par­tic­i­pate in a new fes­ti­val, Ni­tro at the Opera, a one-day free fes­ti­val fea­tur­ing arias by black com­posers. Le Gen­dre's 15-minute Bird of Night, with a li­bret­to adapt­ed from an An­til­lean folk­tale about a girl with mag­i­cal pow­ers, was a huge suc­cess. "The Opera House was in­vad­ed by peo­ple who'd nev­er set foot there be­fore."

Fol­low­ing this suc­cess, Elaine Pad­more, Roy­al Opera House Artis­tic Di­rec­tor, in­vit­ed Le Gen­dre to be­come a ROH As­so­ciate Artiste and com­mis­sioned her to write a full-length opera based on Bird of Night. Work­ing with li­bret­tist Paul Bent­ley and dra­maturge Russ­ian di­rec­tor Ire­na Brown, Le Gen­dre pre­miered Bird in 2006 at the ROH's stu­dio Lin­bury The­atre. Bird's suc­cess led to an­oth­er com­mis­sion for a Cham­ber piece for the ROH Cham­ber soloists. Le Gen­dre's suite, based on Derek Wal­cott's Tales of the Is­lands se­quence of son­nets, was per­formed at Queen's Hall in 2006.Next came a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pe­ter Man­ning, leader of his epony­mous Cham­ber Or­ches­tra, who sug­gest­ed Le Gen­dre set Irish po­et Sea­mus Heaney's Bur­ial at Thebes to mu­sic, with Wal­cott di­rect­ing. This time Le Gen­dre ad­mits "I wasn't en­tire­ly sat­is­fied. It was a dif­fi­cult project and I wrote it too quick­ly with­out the nec­es­sary time or vi­sion of how it should sound." The pre­miere at the Globe The­atre was slat­ed by the press and once again Le Gen­dre en­coun­tered more of the "this is not opera" prej­u­dice Bird of Night had elicit­ed from the re­ac­tionary few.

Le Gen­dre re­mained un­fazed, re­al­is­ing this re­sis­tance to change and in­no­va­tion is "what af­flicts lots of con­tem­po­rary mu­sic and opera." Maybe it's her Cre­ole sen­si­bil­i­ty that en­ables her to cut loose from the rev­er­en­tial ap­proach of some clas­si­cal mu­sic afi­ciona­dos, who are con­tent to nod at fa­mil­iar mu­se­um pieces. For her the cre­ative rush comes from mak­ing her own tra­di­tion in her own time and spaces: "We have to de­fine our­selves our cul­ture, not os­si­fy it. It's a liv­ing breath­ing or­gan­ism which spawns many chil­dren."Since this mi­nor set­back Le Gen­dre has been busy with "loads of opera", four to twen­ty minute song cy­cles, Cham­ber Mu­sic and more the­atre work with Britain's lead­ing black the­atre com­pa­ny Ta­lawa. Be­sides com­pos­ing mu­sic for Lon­don-based Tri­ni play­wright Mustapha Matu­ra's Rum and Co­ca Co­la, her lat­est project, two years in progress, sounds dis­tinct­ly like an­oth­er new de­par­ture from the woman who us­es bam­boo beat­en with tas­sa sticks as voice ac­com­pa­ni­ment.

"Es­tu­ar­ies" in­volves the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty of Eng­land's bor­der town Berwick-up­on-Tweed, col­lab­o­rat­ing with mu­si­cians to "cre­ate mu­sic in­spired by es­tu­ar­ies and built en­vi­ron­ment." Af­ter eco mu­sic, it sounds as though the Cre­ole in the Opera is about to launch en­vi­ro-mu­sic. One won­ders whether Cal­abash might not (in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­ture) com­mis­sion a fur­ther en­vi­ro-mu­sic piece, which will take Le Gen­dre and her au­di­ences to Mt Pelee in Mar­tinique and to the mighty rivers of Guyana, the rain­forests of Trinidad.