Dur­ing semis of Panora­ma 2013, few may have no­ticed arranger An­dre White hid­den in the back of the Tamana Pi­o­neers play­ing drums. How­ev­er, this young arranger has al­ready won Panora­ma in both New York and Lon­don and is qui­et­ly mak­ing in­roads in T&T.

A mul­ti­fac­eted pan per­former, arranger and jazz soloist, White has had lit­tle time to en­joy the tri­umph of his lat­est Brook­lyn Car­ni­val vic­to­ry in Sep­tem­ber. Since May, he has been com­pos­ing for his own jazz quar­tet, gigged around the Boston and New York area, and start­ed record­ing three dif­fer­ent al­bum projects rang­ing from straight jazz, with his quar­tet, to more R&B to fu­sion and reg­gae.

Born in the Unit­ed States with Ja­maican and Trinida­di­an her­itage, White does not fit the tra­di­tion­al mould of steel­band arrangers–not hav­ing grown up on the stage of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah and toiled in the pa­n­yards of T&T. Re­gard­less, his path to suc­cess chal­lenges the con­ven­tion­al norms and may in­deed fore­shad­ow the fu­ture course of T&T's na­tion­al in­stru­ment. Mu­si­cal­ly lit­er­ate and an ac­com­plished jazz soloist, White stud­ied brass, per­cus­sion, and pi­ano mu­sic as a child and con­tin­ued his ed­u­ca­tion at the Berklee Col­lege of Mu­sic in Boston.

White has a gen­uine ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the leg­endary pi­o­neers of steel­band ar­rang­ing, the likes of Boogsie Sharpe, Jit Sama­roo, and Clive Bradley.How­ev­er, his am­bi­tions go be­yond Panora­ma. "I went to Berklee to be­come a mu­si­cian," White said."I want to push that en­ve­lope and, to be hon­est, I want to be a be­bop pan play­er."His ad­vanced mu­si­cal train­ing, gift­ed mu­si­cal ear, and knowl­edge of the past Panora­ma mas­ter arrangers serve to cre­ate a style all his own.

"I've re­al­ly been ap­proach­ing steel­band ar­rang­ing like big-band jazz ar­rang­ing," said White. And he hopes that by be­ing true to him­self he, too, can be recog­nised. A mere 22, White has al­ready amassed an im­pres­sive re­sume as a steel­band arranger. Since 2006, he has arranged for Adlibs Steel Or­ches­tra of Long Is­land be­com­ing, in 2008, the youngest steel­band arranger to win Brook­lyn Panora­ma.With White ar­rang­ing for the band, Adlibs al­so claimed the Brook­lyn Panora­ma crown in 2011 and 2012.

He is al­so ac­claimed for at­tract­ing younger mu­si­cians to the Long Is­land band. Adlibs Steel Or­ches­tra boasts a mem­ber­ship 90 play­ers strong, most­ly un­der the age of 18.

The en­er­gy and ex­u­ber­ance of Adlibs Steel Or­ches­tra was on full dis­play re­cent­ly at the 2012 Brook­lyn Panora­ma, where White's arrange­ment of De­stra's Bad­dist ex­pert­ly bal­anced youth­ful en­thu­si­asm with the crafts­man­ship of a sea­soned mu­si­cian.

White has an en­cy­clopaedic mem­o­ry of the his­to­ry and arrange­ments of Panora­ma tunes. How­ev­er, he makes no apolo­gies for his strong de­sire to use cur­rent pop­u­lar hits as he con­tin­ues to push the lim­its of steel­band ar­rang­ing."Peo­ple want to hear pop­u­lar mu­sic, and the pan arrangers and play­ers need to give that to them," he said."I don't think we should look for songs that sound like Kitch­en­er and oth­ers of the 90s and 80s. We're not liv­ing in the 90s and 80s."White is a reg­u­lar in Lon­don, where he led Man­grove Steel Or­ches­tra to vic­to­ry in the Lon­don Panora­ma 2011. Man­grove leader Matthew Phillips sums it up: "We feel very lucky to have found An­dre when we did–back in ear­ly 2008.

To my mind An­dre is a ge­nius and the band, and me per­son­al­ly, have learned a lot from him and will con­tin­ue to do so."While less well known in T&T, White is chief among a new breed of play­ers/arrangers re­sid­ing in the US who make their way to Trinidad to arrange for Panora­ma.He spent three years ar­rang­ing for Sforza­ta and last year Des­per­a­does gave him his first ex­pe­ri­ence ar­rang­ing for a large band. On­ly a few short weeks ago, he was called, on short no­tice, to arrange for the Tamana Pi­o­neers.Ea­ger to prove his met­tle in the home­land of pan, White dropped every­thing to come here again and em­braced the chal­lenge of tak­ing on a new ar­rang­ing job for a Panora­ma band.

White is ex­cit­ed about this chance to arrange for the Tamana Pi­o­neers. In par­tic­u­lar, the close­ness, qui­et re­solve and the ded­i­ca­tion of the young peo­ple in the Tamana Pi­o­neers is in­spir­ing. And the band's size al­lows him to work more close­ly with each in­di­vid­ual. Formed in 1982 by Michael An­toine, Car­los Ro­jas and Geon Ram­nar­ine, the Tamana Pi­o­neers were found­ed to pro­vide a pos­i­tive ac­tiv­i­ty for the young­sters of the Tamana com­mu­ni­ty.The band per­forms as a small youth band and has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the All Schools Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val since 1983 and has con­sis­tent­ly reached the fi­nals of the small band cat­e­go­ry of Panora­ma each year since 2006. In 1990, the Tamana Pi­o­neers gained in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure when the band went on tour to Scot­land to par­tic­i­pate in the In­ver­ness Youth Folk Fes­ti­val and Ab­erdeen Youth Fes­ti­val.

Since then, the band has re­turned to Scot­land five more times.Panora­ma 2013 has been an up-and-down year for the Tamana Pi­o­neers as the band placed high in the stand­ings for pre­lims, be­fore drop­ping in semis, and even­tu­al­ly plac­ing fifth in the fi­nals.As he con­tin­ues to emerge as a jazz per­former and a pan arranger in Lon­don, T&T, and New York, there is a bright fu­ture ahead for An­dre White.