JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

All Stars wins hearts at pan concert

by

20120520

Even though it was af­ter 1 am yes­ter­day when reign­ing Panora­ma cham­pi­on Neal and Massy Trinidad All Stars Steel Or­ches­tra com­plet­ed its per­for­mance at the fourth edi­tion of the 8 of Hearts Steel­band Con­cert at the Laven­tille Com­plex on the An­gos­tu­ra Com­pound, the au­di­ence re­fused to leave the venue un­til the or­ches­tra played its sig­na­ture se­lec­tion Woman On The Bass.

This, de­spite hav­ing sat through six hours of con­trast­ing per­for­mances from the top nine bands (there was a tie for the eighth po­si­tion) emerg­ing from the 2012 Na­tion­al Steel­band Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion. The con­cert, a pro­duc­tion of the Laven­tille Steel­band Fes­ti­val Foun­da­tion, is staged bi­en­ni­al­ly.

This year's par­tic­i­pants were NL­CB Fon­claire, RBC Re­demp­tion Sound Set­ters, CAL In­vaders, Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus, So­lo Har­monites, BP Rene­gades, PCS Ni­tro­gen Sil­ver Stars, Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove and All Stars. The eight-time Panora­ma cham­pi­on will­ing­ly oblig­ed its fans, and pro­duced an­oth­er riv­et­ing ren­di­tion of the ca­lyp­so sung by Scrunter (Ir­win Reyes John­son) that earned it the ti­tle way back in 1980.

Ear­li­er, the or­ches­tra had of­fered a splen­did reper­toire of songs that fea­tured the in­clu­sion of vo­cal­ist Shel­don Reid to lend voice to Pro­col Harum's A Whiter Shade Of Pale, and sax­o­phon­ist Cur­tis Lewis to in­ter­pret Jo­hann Se­bas­t­ian Bach's Air On A G String. Open­ing the play­bill was the NL­CB Fon­claire do­ing Ken "Pro­fes­sor" Philmore's Pan By Storm, the se­lec­tion that won it sec­ond place in the 1990 Panora­ma fi­nal.

Lend­ing sup­port to its over­all ef­fort was ca­lyp­son­ian Baron (Tim­o­thy Watkins) who com­ple­ment­ed the band's of­fer­ings with a show­case of some of his pop­u­lar work, in­clu­sive of Feel­ing It and Tell Me Why. All the bands utilised ei­ther singers or mu­si­cians to en­hance their 45-minute per­for­mances.

Ex­o­dus had the ser­vices of Pel­ham God­dard and mem­bers of Roots, Har­monites brought along sax­o­phon­ist An­tho­ny Woodruffe Jr, Rene­gades used singer Dex­ter Theophile, Sil­ver Stars had Denyse Plum­mer do an en­chant­i­ng ren­di­tion of One Mo­ment In Time and Phase II brought along the Ly­di­an Singers to as­sist in glo­ri­ous pre­sen­ta­tions of Heal The World and Arch­bish­op Of Pan.

A spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion was made to "stal­wart Laven­tille res­i­dent," mu­si­col­o­gist Mer­le Al­bi­no-de Coteau for her con­tri­bu­tion to cul­ture in the com­mu­ni­ty. A re­tired Di­rec­tor of Cul­ture, Al­bi­no-de Coteau, a grad­u­ate of McGill Uni­ver­si­ty, Cana­da, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, is the hold­er of sev­er­al awards for con­tribut­ing to mu­sic in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She is a re­cip­i­ent of a na­tion­al award, the Hum­ming Bird Medal (1993) for her con­tri­bu­tion to cul­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly for ca­lyp­so and steel­band ac­tiv­i­ties. Mak­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion was Works Min­is­ter and act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er. Al­so present at the event were Min­is­ter of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston Pe­ters, Laven­tille East MP Nile­ung Hy­po­lite, for­mer min­is­ter of cul­ture Joan Yuille-Williams, and pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go, Kei­th Di­az.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored