The whole theme of Panora­ma 2011 was a show time. Show in an­tics, bling, per­for­mance and mu­si­cian­ship. The $2,000,000 (USD $315,955) prize was the dri­ving force that pushed large bands to out-do each oth­er as they all rolled across the stage on fi­nals night on March 5. The south stands were full of peo­ple who wait­ed in an­tic­i­pa­tion for the large bands and all of their splen­dour. Nev­er be­fore have I at­tend­ed a panora­ma fi­nal with so much con­fet­ti, glim­mer­ing dec­o­ra­tions, bal­loons, fire­works and sound ef­fects. The light­ing was ex­cep­tion­al and most of the fi­nals' out­fits were ex­trav­a­gant.

I was for­tu­nate enough to have a seat to the right of the judges be­hind the ra­dio an­nounc­ers, as this was one of the "ben­e­fits" to hav­ing ad­ju­di­cat­ed the sin­gle pan com­pe­ti­tion. Since Chan­nels four and 16 did not get the con­tract to broad­cast, Orville Wright and I had our own lit­tle pri­vate mu­sic com­men­tary to­geth­er since our seats were side by side. We won­dered if the cur­rent com­men­ta­tors could do jus­tice to de­scrib­ing and ex­plain­ing what was hap­pen­ing with the mu­sic (wor­ried be­cause it was an in­ter­na­tion­al broad­cast). But we got over that and en­joyed lis­ten­ing and analysing the mu­sic for each band amongst our­selves. Af­ter each band played peo­ple would tap us on the back and ask us what we thought of that band. We thought that was amus­ing, smiled, of­fered a few words, and set­tled in for the next band.

If you were won­der­ing, the late start was due to Pan Trin­ba­go for­get­ting to pick up one of the medi­um band judges, where­by a small band judge was sub­sti­tut­ed as the al­ter­nate judge. The event was one of those "must be there" ex­pe­ri­ences, that watch­ing it on TV or lis­ten­ing to it on the ra­dio was just not the same.

What's new in the Sa­van­nah?

Many things were new. For one, the venue was dif­fer­ent. Yes, it was right where the Grand Stand used to be, but every­thing in­side the cov­ered stands has changed. The line-of-sight from the au­di­ence's per­spec­tive was dif­fer­ent (many blind spots). The stage was big­ger, the sound sys­tem and light­ing were bet­ter, and the North Stand had white plas­tic chairs to sit on dur­ing the fi­nals. From the en­trance to the wash­rooms, it's all new and invit­ing to con­cert-go­ers. Ef­forts to keep the place clean dur­ing the com­pe­ti­tion, from the wash­rooms to sweep­ing the stage, were ac­com­plished, but on the down­side, park­ing was still a fi­as­co.

The ladies are do­ing it!

In years past, March has been Woman's Month for PanOn­TheNet. I would like to point out that this year the ladies were do­ing some­thing brave and dif­fer­ent in their arrange­ments. They stunned their au­di­ences with in­ter­est­ing and cre­ative ex­per­i­ments that have nev­er been done be­fore in a Panora­ma set­ting. In the medi­um band cat­e­go­ry, Michelle Hug­gins-Watts left the se­mi-fi­nal au­di­ence in a paral­ysed state of awe. Shocked that any­one would stop the pace of a Panora­ma tune, she com­plete­ly changed the mood of Do Some­thing For Pan as she broke in­to a blues.

No one saw that com­ing, the re­ac­tion stirred the au­di­ence in the se­mi-fi­nals but in the fi­nals they cheered her on. I am glad she did not take it out. She al­so did some very clever re-har­mon­i­sa­tion to the funky part of Boogsie's piece that was re­al­ly pro­gram­mat­ic in her ag­gres­sive arrange­ment to get the point across. The next la­dy arranger that we need to watch out for in the near fu­ture is Shenelle Abra­ham who arranged for the small band St Mar­garet's Su­per­stars. Her arrange­ment was out of this world. I was im­pressed and be­lieve it went over many folk's heads that did not re­alise the ge­nius in this arrange­ment. What was very im­pres­sive was her ob­vi­ous knowl­edge of mu­si­cal chords and how to dis­trib­ute them.

The or­ches­tra­tion was top notch and the play­ers were clean. There was clear text-paint­ing of the mo­tif Call­ing Meh which was de­pict­ed in both the melody and rhythm. Even though the arrange­ment had tech­ni­cal pas­sages with rich har­mo­ny that chal­lenged the play­ers, it still had a Tri­ni flavour through­out. The last la­dy arranger I was im­pressed by was Vanes­sa Headley who arranged for Gold­en Hands in the small band cat­e­go­ry. The mu­sic se­lec­tion was most def­i­nite­ly one of the old­est com­ing from the mid-1970s when ca­lyp­so was chang­ing in­to so­ca. The piece was very groovy and even went in­to a swing.

Gold­en Hands was very clean, well-bal­anced, and def­i­nite­ly set a mood that no oth­er band ac­com­plished that night. It was ob­vi­ous they had put a lot of work in­to their mu­sic and pre­sen­ta­tion. The jazz sec­tion, which was orig­i­nal­ly a lavu&ea­cute;, was al­so a break in the panora­ma arrange­ment style. Like Michelle-Hig­gins-Watts, Vanes­sa Headley al­so broke the tra­di­tion­al panora­ma tem­po for the sake of the mu­sic.

The best kept se­cret

If you did not at­tend the fi­nals of the sin­gle pan and small bands in Ari­ma at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, you re­al­ly missed a show. I had to judge the sin­gle pan bands, and was very hap­py by the qual­i­ty and im­prove­ment of the per­for­mances as com­pared to the se­mi-fi­nals. Spe­cial ku­dos to the Trinidad & To­ba­go De­fence Force Steel Or­ches­tra which may have not won in points but won my heart. Robert To­bitt has bro­ken through as an arranger to be reck­oned with in the fu­ture.

Dr Jean­nine Re­my