Pe­ter Ray Blood

Icon­ic pan­nist Ken "Pro­fes­sor" Philmore de­liv­ered a mas­ter­class mu­sic "lec­ture" in the art form last Fri­day night to kick off a funky week­end phase of the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence.Long re­gard­ed as one of the finest in the world, Philmore fur­ther en­hanced his rep­u­ta­tion as he daz­zled the large crowd at "Paz­zaz," the sev­enth night of the fes­ti­val at the scenic Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park.

Philmore found him­self sur­round­ed on the card by ex­plo­sive steel or­ches­tras like reign­ing Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars and last year's champ PCS Sil­ver Stars but he tow­ered like a colos­sus, ex­plor­ing ma­te­r­i­al rang­ing from con­tem­po­rary jazz to old school R&B.Asked to come be­hind a siz­zling per­for­mance by Sil­ver Stars, "the Pro­fes­sor" came out swing­ing, hard­ly miss­ing a beat as he launched in­to Spy­ro Gy­ra's en­chant­i­ng­ly melod­ic Morn­ing Dance.

Avoid­ing any ex­ten­sive im­pro­vi­sa­tion, he treat­ed the smash 1979 hit with deep re­spect, ex­pert­ly trac­ing the unique melody lines while rid­ing the boun­cy groove de­liv­ered by the rhythm sec­tion, as he cast a beau­ti­ful Latin glow over the evening.Philmore turned his at­ten­tion to Call­ing Meh, a song he co-wrote for so­ca di­va De­stra Gar­cia for this year's Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion, ham­mer­ing out the de­fi­ant and catchy re­frain of "I love steel­pan, I love pan" in the slight­ly up-tem­po num­ber.

He then switched gears, team­ing up with tal­ent­ed vo­cal­ist Jerome Bisses­sar to woo the au­di­ence with Michael Jack­son's Hu­man Na­ture and Al Green's 1971 clas­sic Let's Stay To­geth­er.Bisses­sar was vir­tu­al­ly flaw­less in the two ren­di­tions, his vo­cal in­flec­tions in­vok­ing mem­o­ries of both Jack­son and Green, while "the Pro­fes­sor" ef­fort­less­ly weaved his mag­ic in the back­ground. He carved out a sul­try so­lo in Let's Stay To­geth­er, to leave his dis­tinc­tive mark on the piece.Philmore wound up the "lec­ture" with the mes­meris­ing Now That We've Found Love, Third World's peer­less 1978 reg­gae cov­er of the O'Jays orig­i­nal, cli­max­ing his set on a high.