Now that we are in a sea­son of seek­ing to brush aside the colo­nial past and recog­nis­ing our own, there is no one more de­serv­ing of a recog­ni­tion than in­ter­na­tion­al con­cert pi­anist Winifred Atwell. As an­nounced, the con­cert space at Queen’s Hall is to be­come the Winifred Atwell Au­di­to­ri­um.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there is a pauci­ty of in­for­ma­tion about her con­tri­bu­tion, es­pe­cial­ly amongst the post-In­de­pen­dence gen­er­a­tion.

This news­pa­per car­ried a short­ened out­line of the ca­reer and ac­com­plish­ments of the Tu­na­puna-born con­cert pi­anist, who played in Britain, the USA and Aus­tralia.

While she may have gone to Eng­land with her Trinida­di­an sense of mu­sic, she learnt the tech­ni­cal as­pects of her cho­sen pro­fes­sion at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Mu­sic in Britain to be­come an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised mu­si­cian.

But in true Tri­ni fash­ion, she ex­tem­po­rised in Britain to meet her liv­ing and school­ing needs. She played the pop­u­lar boo­gie-woo­gie and rag­time hits of the pe­ri­od in the night­clubs and the British ver­sion of the Amer­i­can “Speak Eas­ies.” It was a re­al chal­lenge for a black woman from the colonies in that post-WWII pe­ri­od in Britain to get by in Lon­don in re­cov­ery from Hitler’s bomb­ing.

But Ms Atwell, hav­ing es­tab­lished her in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion as a con­cert pi­anist, did not leave her past be­hind. When she left home in the 1940s, the steel­pan and steel­band were in their in­fan­cy. Twen­ty-odd years lat­er on a vis­it here, she en­coun­tered first-hand the steel­band, in par­tic­u­lar, the Pan Am North Stars led by the renowned An­tho­ny “Muff Man” Williams. She in­vit­ed the leader and his band to join her in New York for a se­ries of Pan-Pi­ano con­certs; a unique ag­gre­ga­tion of the time.

Among oth­er re­sult­ing con­se­quences were con­certs here by the Atwell-Williams North Stars team to play at the said Queen’s Hall and in Wood­ford Square in down­town Port-of-Spain.

In ad­di­tion to the mem­o­ries left be­hind from the Atwell-North Stars con­certs amongst a fad­ing gen­er­a­tion, is the “Ivory and Steel” on “wax,” which brought to­geth­er the twin tal­ents of pi­ano vir­tu­oso and a great steel­band, its leader and arranger.

Of spe­cial im­por­tance on the vinyl disc of the time, is Ms Atwell’s com­po­si­tion, co-arranged with Williams, of the Dev­il’s Daugh­ter. The thrilling Atwell runs along the key­board and the deep back­ground rum­bling bass of the North Stars in de­pic­tion of the temptress' daugh­ter, are part of the na­tion­al her­itage.

Typ­i­cal­ly, though, we are a lit­tle late (but not too late) in the ho­n­our­ing of Ms Atwell. That was done four years ago through a Blue Plaque in Rail­ton Road, Lon­don, a place where the Trinidad-born in­ter­na­tion­al pi­anist fre­quent­ly fea­tured.

In the mean­time, no last­ing ho­n­our and dis­played love for the great An­tho­ny “Muff Man” Williams, tuner/arranger and great in­no­va­tor of the steel­band. For those not aware, it was the Muff Man who put the pans on wheels and cre­at­ed the 28-note spi­der-web tenor, won the first two steel­band com­pe­ti­tions with Dan is the Man and Mam­ma Dis is Mas at the Grand Stand and the steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val with Jo­hann Straus’ Voic­es of Spring.

The small open­ing where Williams cre­at­ed and nur­tured North Stars is now over­run with wild grass at Up­per Brun­ton Road in St James. An­tho­ny Williams and Pan Am North Stars are al­so de­serv­ing of our recog­ni­tion and ho­n­our.