Pe­ter Ray Blood

The re­cent Bird­song an­nu­al Schol­ar­ship Ben­e­fit Con­cert was one of the best pro­duc­tions staged at the Lord Kitch­en­er Au­di­to­ri­um of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) since its open­ing. Staged by the Bird­song Acad­e­my, an aca­d­e­m­ic ap­pendage of Bird­song Steel Or­ches­tra, the in­sti­tu­tion reach­es be­yond pan to in­clude teach­ing its young stu­dents in oth­er in­stru­ments, in­clud­ing key­board, string, wind, brass and per­cus­sion. Stage man­aged by Maria King and Calvin Bartholomew, the pro­gramme ran seam­less­ly, fea­tur­ing cel­e­brat­ed US pan­nist Andy Narell, acad­e­my fac­ul­ty mem­ber and key­boardist Raf Robert­son, US-domi­ciled Vin­cent­ian key­boardist Frankie Mc In­tosh, sight-im­paired Berklee Col­lege vo­cal­ist Ny­ol Man­swell, jazz singer Vaugh­nette Big­ford and Bird­song Small En­sem­ble.

The pro­gramme was opened on a high note by Man­swell, an af­fa­ble young man who is blessed with a unique and spe­cial voice. His abil­i­ty to blend and ma­nip­u­late chords and notes was out­stand­ing, com­ple­ment­ed by his dic­tion and de­liv­ery. His reper­toire in­clud­ed items like The Way You Make Me Feel, Crazy Love Dance, High Love and Round Mid­night. A sig­nif­i­cant in­gre­di­ent in Man­swell's per­for­mance was the mu­si­cian­ship of Ital­ian Noe Socha and Ra­jesh Mo­hammed, al­so sight-im­paired and al­so prod­ucts of Berklee. With Mc In­tosh on grand pi­ano, Mo­hammed aug­ment­ed on key­boards, while Socha as­tound­ed all with his vir­tu­os­i­ty on gui­tar and ha­mon­i­ca. Big­ford was at her crowd-pleas­ing best, es­pe­cial­ly when, ac­com­pa­nied by Mc In­tosh, she did a sen­su­ous and provoca­tive cov­er of No Mon­ey No Love, one of Spar­row's count­less clas­sics. Robert­son led the Bird­song Small En­sem­ble in a seg­ment that in­clud­ed well re­ceived num­bers like Bernie's Tune, Ar­man­do's Rhum­ba, This Feel­ing Nice, Come­back Home and End­less Vi­bra­tions. Six play­ers of con­ven­tion­al in­stru­ments and six young fe­male pan­nists gave the Mighty Tri­ni's Sail­ing a new and en­tic­ing ve­neer of mu­si­cal mag­ic.

The play­ing of the small en­sem­ble is more than suf­fi­cient tes­ti­mo­ny of the in­fi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties of the bird­song mu­sic pro­gramme. Pro­fes­sion­al­ism and tal­ent oozed from these young mu­si­cians, un­der­scor­ing the the­o­ry that pan and mu­sic is a pos­si­ble balm to quell the cur­rent surge in crime in the coun­try. McIn­tosh, who is renowned in lo­cal mu­sic cir­cles, es­pe­cial­ly ca­lyp­so, for his tremen­dous arrange­ments through the years, ex­celled when he played Kitch­en­er's Pan in Har­mo­ny and Sky­lark. The fore­most non-Trinida­di­an pan­nist in the world, Narell showed why for­mer Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Patrick Arnold gave him the dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the first non-na­tion­al to be giv­en per­mis­sion to arrange for a steel­band in the na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion. Play­ing dou­ble tenors tuned by the leg­endary El­lie Man­nette, Narell's se­lec­tions in­clud­ed Sug­ar for Pan, Kalin­da, Laven­tille, Ba­by Step and Cof­fee Street, the lat­ter his com­po­si­tion that took San Fer­nan­do's Skif­fle to a na­tion­al Panora­ma fi­nal. Since its in­cep­tion in 2004 more than 600 young peo­ple have ben­e­fit­ed from the acad­e­my's pro­gramme. All in­struc­tions are free in in­stru­ments sourced by bird­song. This month, un­der the aus­pices of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, sev­en ad­di­tion­al steel­bands are ex­pect­ed to adopt the Bird­song mod­el of com­mu­ni­ty-based mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion.