Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

Mu­sic lovers across T&T can look for­ward to May 25, for the launch of Im­bi­zo Moyenne, the new al­bum from Moyenne, tout­ed as one of the best Caribbean jazz bands to come along in many years.

The band, led by Chan­tal Es­delle, will be giv­ing a con­cert per­for­mance of mu­sic from the al­bum at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre on the cor­ner of Roberts Street and White Street, Wood­brook.

In fact, the Zu­lu South African phrase Im­bi­zo Moyenne was the in­spi­ra­tion for the band's name. In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Es­delle rem­i­nisced on the spir­i­tu­al in­spi­ra­tion be­hind the band's choice of name: "I was giv­en the phrase by Thabo Let­sat­tle, a friend of mine at col­lege.

"I had asked him how I could de­scribe a piece I had writ­ten that sym­bol­ised peo­ple com­ing to­geth­er in re­sponse to the call of a shaman. The piece Im­bi­zo Moyenne has gone through sev­er­al changes since then and is the ti­tle track of our new al­bum.

"I took the word Moyenne to mean that call, our call, to cre­ate and per­form mu­sic."

This call to mu­sic has led the band to per­form in the cat­e­go­ry of Caribbean jazz, which in­cor­po­rates in­flu­ences across sev­er­al gen­res in­clud­ing ca­lyp­so, son cubano (a style of mu­sic that orig­i­nat­ed in Cu­ba), reg­gae and zouk.

The band was formed in 1998 af­ter Es­delle re­turned to Trinidad from at­tend­ing the Berklee Col­lege of Mu­sic in Boston where she stud­ied jazz com­po­si­tion.

In Moyenne, Es­delle plays key­boards and is the vo­cal­ist as well as a com­pos­er.

The jour­ney be­gan with Glen­ford "Kevin" Sobers, an ac­com­plished pan­man, arranger for the steel­band New Age Trend­set­ters and pan ra­ma­jay so­lo win­ner.

"I had just re­turned home from Berklee and my long-time friend Kevin Sobers had just come home as well from per­form­ing for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od in Japan. We did our first two gigs as a duet."

Next came Don­ald "Ju­nior" Noel, per­cus­sion­ist and mas­ter drum­mer of the North­west Laven­tille Cul­tur­al Move­ment. In 2003, Moyenne's res­i­dent bassist Dou­glas Re­don, long-time and recog­nised mem­ber of Phase II Pan Groove and res­i­dent arranger for Wood­brook Mod­er­naires, joined the group fol­lowed by Dar­ren Shep­pard, leader of the band Fu­sion and the Dar­ren Shep­pard Project, who has been the drum­mer since 2009.

The new al­bum, Im­bi­zo Moyenne, was record­ed as part of The Eth­nic Jazz Club's Sound Con­nec­tion project, which is con­nect­ed with the Em­pre­sa de Graba­ciones y Edi­ciones Mu­si­cales (EGREM)–Span­ish for En­ter­prise of Record­ings and Mu­si­cal Edi­tions.

The EGREM is one of Cu­ba's old­est record­ing la­bels and is al­so re­spon­si­ble for the MU­SICU­BA project, which is the lead­ing recog­nised Cuban artis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion agency for artists, tech­ni­cians and per­form­ers.

Through the Sound Con­nec­tion project, a three-man sound en­gi­neer­ing team was con­tract­ed to record and mas­ter three mu­si­cal groups of which Moyenne was one.

"A sev­en-year re­la­tion­ship with Alex­is Vazquez' team in Cu­ba proved to be a plat­form on which an easy sib­ling-like re­la­tion­ship ma­te­ri­alised be­tween me and the au­dio en­gi­neers from MU­SICU­BA-EGREM," said Es­delle.

"Fi­to, Luis and Reinier did not just come and work for me, they worked with me on the project. Vic­tor Donowa and his team from Au­dio Works went all out to make sure we had the equip­ment we need­ed."

In the vein of col­lab­o­ra­tion and the ex­por­ta­tion of artis­tic ser­vices, the MU­SICU­BA project in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Eth­nic Jazz Club, as­sist­ed with the record­ing of this lat­est al­bum by Moyenne. They in­cor­po­rat­ed their knowl­edge of sound record­ing and en­gi­neer­ing and their ex­pe­ri­ence in live record­ing en­gi­neer­ing for the lead­ing bands in Cu­ba.

Es­delle said, "Moyenne was mag­nif­i­cent. The process of prepar­ing for our record­ing dur­ing Sound Con­nec­tion made me no­tice, yet again, that these mu­si­cians val­ue their re­la­tion­ship with me.

"Kevin, Ju­nior, Dougie, and Dar­ren, showed up, in every sense of the word, for re­hearsals, for the record­ings and with their com­po­si­tions. Play­ing with them is al­ways a joy and a bless­ing."

Tick­ets for the al­bum launch/con­cert which be­gins at 8pm are $150.00 and avail­able from Es­delle, the Lit­tle Carib The­atre and mem­bers of the Eth­nic Mu­sic Jazz Club (eth­nic­jaz­zclub@gmail.com). The con­cert is al­so set to pro­vide at least one mu­si­cal sur­prise–a per­for­mance by an ac­claimed pan­man whose iden­ti­ty will soon be re­vealed.