Cherisse Moe

It's be­ing dubbed the biggest post-Panora­ma event, and the ac­tion is set to go down at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah on Ju­ly 2 from 7 pm. The Four Pil­lars of Steel...A Reper­toire Cham­pi­onship, pro­duced by ENI En­ter­tain­ment and WACK Ra­dio 90.1FM, will see the na­tion's four old­est steel or­ches­tras square off in a mu­si­cal bat­tle, where the win­ning steel­band will go home with brag­ging rights and a cash prize of $40,000.

The oth­er three bands would be paid an ap­pear­ance fee of $20,000. With more than 250 years of steel un­der their belts, CAL In­vaders, Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars, Tokyo and Wit­co Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tras are ex­pect­ed to put their best pan sticks for­ward as they com­pete in the first af­fair, priced at $150.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence at the Ho­tel Nor­mandie, St Ann's, on Wednes­day, the mas­ter­mind be­hind the event, Ju­nior Hut­son, said there was need to pro­vide "dif­fer­ent av­enues" for lo­cal pan­men to show­case their skills and take T&T's na­tion­al in­stru­ment to the next lev­el. Not­ing that he would have hoped to of­fer par­tic­i­pants a greater in­cen­tive, Hut­son lament­ed that he was fi­nan­cial­ly lim­it­ed as on­ly two cor­po­rate spon­sors, Heinken and An­gos­tu­ra, had come on board to sup­port the ven­ture. "If we could have done more, we would have," he said.

Im­pres­sive reper­toire

Stat­ing that he came up with the con­cept last year, Hut­son said the com­pe­ti­tion would fi­nal­ly put to rest the on­go­ing de­bate about which or­ches­tra re­al­ly had the most im­pres­sive reper­toire of mu­sic.

He said each band will have:

• Forty-five min­utes to ex­e­cute their reper­toire, which must com­prise of four mu­si­cal pieces-Pop, Ca­lyp­so, Latin and Clas­si­cal. ($1,500 would be award­ed to the win­ner of each cat­e­go­ry).

• A stage side of no more than 40 and no less than 25 play­ers.

• To present a list of their reper­toire and the or­der of play to the pro­duc­ers.

Hut­son added that judges for the event would be sourced from south Trinidad.

Al­ways ready

Ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of Trinidad All Stars, Mark Su­perville, said while he be­lieved that the bands "should not have to com­pete," the two-mil­lion dol­lar Panora­ma cham­pi­on band is "al­ways ready" for com­pe­ti­tion. Trevor Coop­er, as­sis­tant man­ag­er of In­vaders Steel Or­ches­tra shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments. He said In­vaders was al­ready prepar­ing a "large reper­toire" of mu­sic for the event. And not­ing that he had been an in­te­gral part of Des­per­a­does for the past 41 years, cap­tain David Davis said his band was "very en­thu­si­as­tic" to take part in the com­pe­ti­tion. Cap­tain of the Tokyo Steel­band, Os­wald God­dard, mean­while, as­sured that his band was al­so ready to bag the win­ning prize, and jok­ing­ly called for the or­gan­is­ers to con­sid­er ex­tend­ing the 45-minute al­lot­ted time as "I have so much mu­sic to play!"

Be­yond the shores

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of WACK, Ken­ny Phillips, said he would be stream­ing the event live via the world­wide Web, as well as com­pil­ing the songs per­formed by the or­ches­tras for "im­me­di­ate down­load" at a cost of US .99 cents. He said the time had come for the lo­cal steel­band sec­tor to get the world "more ac­quaint­ed with our mu­sic." "It took a pri­vate in­vestor to stage this ini­tia­tive. I have al­ways said that the most suc­cess­ful pan ven­ture would not be Panora­ma, it will be pan play­ing con­tem­po­rary mu­sic so that it can go be­yond the shores of T&T." Al­so present at the con­fer­ence was pan leg­end, Pel­ham God­dard, who en­dorsed the project, call­ing The Four Pil­lars of Steel Reper­toire Cham­pi­onship a "unique, nov­el event."