SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dra@ya­hoo.com

It’s termed The World Cup of Pan, and the PanoGra­ma 2021 in­stal­ment slat­ed to be­gin on May 7 at 8 pm on Face­book, In­sta­gram and YouTube, is go­ing full speed ahead both on­screen and be­hind the scenes, says founder and di­rec­tor, Nevin Roach.

Au­di­tions wrapped up re­cent­ly and while the pre­lim­i­nary round is in the wings, the PanoGra­ma En­ter­tain­ment (PGE) team cooked up some­thing spe­cial for par­tic­i­pants and the pub­lic.

The Bar­ba­dos-based steel­pan on­line en­ter­tain­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion con­clud­ed its Knowl­edge for Suc­cess three-part se­ries on April 6, de­scrib­ing the ini­tia­tive as a team ef­fort con­tribut­ing to­wards the holis­tic per­son­al, mu­si­cal and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment of pan­nists.

“It was a re­sound­ing suc­cess,” says Roach.

Com­menc­ing on March 27, the ca­reer guid­ance ses­sion was de­liv­ered by Pro­fes­sor Liam Teague, head of steel­pan stud­ies at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty. Teague has played with more than 15 dif­fer­ent in­ter­na­tion­al en­sem­bles and serves as a judge at some of the most pres­ti­gious steel­pan com­pe­ti­tions world­wide.

He stressed the im­por­tance of ver­sa­til­i­ty and sub­stance as be­ing vi­tal com­po­nents in the steel­pan ca­reer. The ses­sion was well-re­ceived and at­tract­ed at­ten­dants rep­re­sent­ing the pub­lic and par­tic­i­pants in the com­pe­ti­tion. At­ten­dees worked as­sid­u­ous­ly at get­ting ques­tions an­swered and re­ceived a lot of ad­vice from Teague.

The per­son­al de­vel­op­ment ses­sion fol­lowed. It was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Stef­fon Camp­bell, as­sis­tant lec­tur­er at Cari­mac, free­lance jour­nal­ist, com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant, pod­cast­er and au­thor.

Camp­bell stressed that mu­si­cians should in­vest in them­selves.

At the end of the ses­sion, par­tic­i­pants ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion and grat­i­tude, es­pe­cial­ly for the spe­cial tricks of the pan busi­ness they learned.

Clos­ing the we­bi­nar se­ries was the ses­sion on mu­si­cal de­vel­op­ment, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by steel­pan vet­er­an, Natasha Joseph. Joseph is an ex­pe­ri­enced pan­nist with a ca­reer span­ning three-plus decades and has been drill mis­tress for sev­er­al or­ches­tras in the Na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

She brought a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence to the ses­sion, which was geared specif­i­cal­ly to­wards PanoGra­ma par­tic­i­pants. The par­tic­i­pants dis­sect­ed the cri­te­ria with Joseph and learned var­i­ous mu­si­cal tech­niques that could be ap­plied to de­liv­er their best per­for­mances for any com­pe­ti­tion.

In a qual­i­ty-analy­sis cri­tiquing ca­pac­i­ty, mu­si­cian, pan­nist, and reg­is­tered com­peti­tor for the up­com­ing PanoGra­ma com­pe­ti­tion rep­re­sent­ing Eng­land, Dou­glas “Dougie” Dall­away, gave his views on the we­bi­nar se­ries.

“These things are ar­guably more im­por­tant than the com­pe­ti­tions. There is no point in com­pet­ing if you aren’t learn­ing. It is very good to be learn­ing things from the likes of very ex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple. It is a great ini­tia­tive to keep go­ing. It helps with the de­vel­op­ment and the sharp­en­ing of skills so that peo­ple can­not on­ly com­pete, but they can al­so go out in­to the world and rep­re­sent on a high­er lev­el,” he said.

Dall­away thanked PGE for the ini­tia­tive.

Par­tic­i­pants, as well as mem­bers of the pub­lic who at­tend­ed the se­ries, were grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn from such cel­e­brat­ed vet­er­ans, cost-free, says Roach.

As the se­ries came to a close, it was hailed as a re­sound­ing suc­cess on all fronts.

To stay con­nect­ed with PanoGra­ma En­ter­tain­ment and up­dat­ed on the com­pe­ti­tion: https://link­tr.ee/panogra­ma.

PanoGra­ma En­ter­tain­ment wish­es all the com­peti­tors great suc­cess al­though there can be on­ly one win­ner, and ex­press­es ap­pre­ci­a­tion to all who have, and are con­tin­u­ing to make the or­gan­i­sa­tion and pro­duc­tions worth­while.