St Vin­cent born pi­anist Sean Suther­land will join the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra (NSSO) in its per­for­mance of Pi­ano Con­cer­to No 1 in B Flat Mi­nor, Op 23 by Py­tor Tchaikovsky on June 4 and 5 at the Lord Kitch­en­er Au­di­to­ri­um of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA).Sean has per­formed as a soloist and ac­com­pa­nist through­out the Caribbean, in the US, and in Cana­da, where he now re­sides. Born in St Vin­cent, Sean be­gan his mu­si­cal stud­ies with Lois Williams. Af­ter pro­gress­ing through both the the­o­ry and pi­ano prac­ti­cal grad­ed ex­am­i­na­tions of the Roy­al Schools of Mu­sic (Lon­don, UK), Sean was of­fered a schol­ar­ship to study in the UK at age 15. Hav­ing then not yet com­plet­ed sec­ondary school, Sean chose to com­plete his high school ed­u­ca­tion and was sub­se­quent­ly ac­cept­ed to the Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy.

At MIT, Sean stud­ied both en­gi­neer­ing and mu­sic at the un­der­grad­u­ate lev­el and went on to com­plete a Mas­ter's de­gree in En­gi­neer­ing. Dur­ing that time, he stud­ied pi­ano with Heng-Jin Park and Jerome Rose. He lat­er stud­ied with Pa­tria Zan­der of the New Eng­land Con­ser­va­to­ry be­fore re­turn­ing to the Caribbean in 2004.Dur­ing his time in the Caribbean, Sean was as­so­ci­at­ed with many mu­si­cal en­deav­ors. He was mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of the Rhyth­mix Steel Or­ches­tra of St Vin­cent and arranged mu­sic for an all-clas­si­cal recital called "Ivory and Steel." This con­cert fea­tured mas­ter­pieces, in­clud­ing the first move­ment of Beethoven's Fifth Sym­pho­ny and the en­tire Mozart 21st Pi­ano Con­cer­to, played by Sean on pi­ano ac­com­pa­nied by Rhyth­mix.In Au­gust 2009, Sean al­so per­formed the Grieg Pi­ano Con­cer­to with the Na­tion­al Sin­for­nia Or­ches­tra of Trinidad.

"I'm de­light­ed that Sean Suther­land will join the or­ches­tra for our per­for­mance of the con­cer­to," said Mu­si­cal Di­rec­tor Jes­sel Mur­ray."This con­cert is an im­por­tant one for the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra and it will be a fab­u­lous op­por­tu­ni­ty for young mu­si­cians to per­form side-by-side with pro­fes­sion­als like Sean.""We are proud to be able to of­fer a con­cert with such mu­si­cal va­ri­ety," said Min­is­ter of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Win­ston Pe­ters."There is a lot of ex­tra­or­di­nary tal­ent in the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra and this con­cert pro­vides us with a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate the skill and ex­per­tise of our Steel Sym­pho­ny."The Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra (NSSO) was formed in De­cem­ber 2007 and is ad­min­is­tered by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.

The en­sem­ble is com­posed of au­di­tioned play­ers, many of whom are Uni­ver­si­ty trained, who rep­re­sent the best com­bi­na­tion of tech­nique and lit­er­a­cy among steel band play­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Jes­sel Mur­ray, the Head of the Mu­sic Unit at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, Trinidad, is the Artis­tic Di­rec­tor and Con­duc­tor of the en­sem­ble.This En­sem­ble ex­clu­sive­ly utilis­es the Gen­e­sis Pans ("G" pans) which were de­vel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine by a team lead by na­tion­al award win­ner Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland, Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing.