Dur­ing a vis­it to Vi­en­na, Aus­tria from June 15 to 17 to en­ter­tain guests of British am­bas­sador to that coun­try, Si­mon Smith, at a func­tion to com­mem­o­rate the birth­day of Queen Eliz­a­beth II, Trinida­di­an Ter­rence Noel's BT Melo­di­ans' Steel Or­ches­tra was hearti­ly de­scribed as Britain's lead­ing cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors by Smith. "The steel­pan is a part of British cul­ture," he said.

The BT Melo­di­ans Steel Or­ches­tra has toured sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean, Asian, Mid­dle East, and Far East coun­tries in the ser­vice of the British Gov­ern­ment's cul­tur­al out­reach pro­grammes. Dur­ing the Aus­tri­an gig, an in­vi­ta­tion to play in Rome was ex­tend­ed by an Ital­ian Mil­i­tary At­tach&ea­cute; to the UN. Mem­bers of the or­ches­tra al­so con­duct­ed steel­pan work­shop ses­sions with pupils of the Vi­en­na Bilin­gual Mid­dle School, lo­cat­ed near­by.

Noel was pleased to re­late that the British am­bas­sador, in de­liv­er­ing his wel­come ad­dress and fea­ture speech, told his au­di­ence of dig­ni­taries from many oth­er coun­tries that the mu­sic they were hear­ing was the scin­til­lat­ing sounds of the steel­pan, and that this par­tic­u­lar band was the cul­tur­al am­bas­sador of Britain to the world. An­oth­er high­light of the evening's pro­ceed­ings was the ren­der­ing of the British Na­tion­al An­them, God Save The Queen, which the or­ches­tra played live with vig­or­ous and melo­di­ous ac­com­pa­ni­ment by Am­bas­sador Smith on his trum­pet.