Si­mon Lee

On an ear­ly pre-Christ­mas af­ter­noon Queen's Hall is ap­par­ent­ly de­sert­ed; but slip­ping through the stage door at the rear I hear a gen­tle rip­ple of pi­ano notes, which has the im­me­di­ate ef­fect of dis­si­pat­ing the headache and mus­cu­lar ten­sion of an hour's dri­ve to town. Unan­nounced and mo­men­tar­i­ly un­seen I glide to­wards the Stein­way grand, un­will­ing to break the spell which con­duc­tor, choral di­rec­tor and pi­anist Richard Tangyuk is weav­ing in to­tal ab­sorp­tion.

In a cou­ple of weeks Tangyuk will have a much larg­er au­di­ence and an­oth­er high­ly suc­cess­ful and mul­ti-tal­ent­ed col­lab­o­ra­tor-vi­o­lin­ist and pan vir­tu­oso Liam Teague. The duo will be pre­sent­ing two con­certs (Jan­u­ary 5 and 6 at Na­pari­ma Bowl and Queen's Hall) of clas­si­cal pieces, high­light­ing their in­stru­ments of choice and giv­ing lo­cal au­di­ences an all-too-rare New Year's or Feast of the Kings' gift of clas­si­cal mu­sic.

Tangyuk and Teague, who have nev­er per­formed to­geth­er pre­vi­ous­ly, be­long to a small cadre of lo­cal mu­si­cians who have found ful­fil­ment in the rel­a­tive­ly se­lect field of clas­si­cal mu­sic. The no­tion that this genre is strict­ly west­ern and there­fore alien or in­ac­ces­si­ble to Caribbean au­di­ences, is be­lied by a long line of re­gion­al com­posers and in­stru­men­tal­ists and the suc­cess of such an­nu­al fes­ti­vals as the Pablo Casals in Puer­to Ri­co or Bar­ba­dos' Hold­er's Sea­son.

For Tangyuk, the in­duc­tion in­to clas­si­cal mu­sic re­mains a mys­tery. No one in his fam­i­ly played an in­stru­ment and out­side of school, his on­ly ex­po­sure was one hour's pro­gram­ming a week on the ra­dio. While his peers may have been in a kaiso or ear­ly so­ca, funk or reg­gae groove, he ad­mits: "My fas­ci­na­tion with clas­si­cal mu­sic was so in­tense I tend­ed to over­look ca­lyp­so."

De­spite his own pas­sion, he's both sym­pa­thet­ic and per­spi­ca­cious about those who do not share it: "A lot of peo­ple are in­tim­i­dat­ed by clas­si­cal mu­sic....some of it does re­quire a knowl­edge of style and com­po­si­tion...we've been ex­posed to a lot of loud mu­sic and so are no longer at­tuned to the nu­ances." It's pre­cise­ly those nu­ances-not just in tem­po changes, but in rhythm, tone, sonori­ties and colour that he's still fas­ci­nat­ed by and wish­es to share with lo­cal au­di­ences.

Cater­ing for lo­cal taste is a chal­lenge: "Tri­nis like what they know but it's im­por­tant for peo­ple to lis­ten to new things." Con­se­quent­ly the pro­gramme is a cal­cu­lat­ed mix of the ever pop­u­lar and fa­mil­iar (Bach, Vi­val­di, Schu­bert, Chopin, Vi­en­nese melodies) with the new. The con­cert will be­gin with the pre­miere per­for­mance of Grotesque, a piece for pan and pi­ano com­posed by a grad­u­ate stu­dent of Teague's at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty, where Teague is Head of Pan. "I've no idea how the pub­lic will re­act," Tangyuk opines with a note of trep­i­da­tion.

While the com­po­si­tion fea­tures com­plex os­ti­na­to struc­tures, a presto tem­po, and is tech­ni­cal­ly ex­treme­ly de­mand­ing, Tangyuk de­fends its choice as cur­tain rais­er; "We thought it im­por­tant to do some­thing new and which was writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for pan." There's al­so the sec­ondary but equal­ly valid jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that "If lo­cal per­form­ers don't try to stretch au­di­ences" how will they ex­tend their lis­ten­ing? An­oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion was the pro­mo­tion of pan as a bona fide in­stru­ment and play­ing a piece that has not been tran­scribed from an­oth­er in­stru­ment (pi­ano, vi­o­lin). "Not every­thing works on pan," Tangyuk brave­ly spec­u­lates, "it has a lim­it­ed range and is a per­cus­sive in­stru­ment un­like the vi­o­lin or cel­lo." Maybe it's a smart move to pre­miere Grotesque first (leav­ing the au­di­ence lit­tle choice but to re­main in their seats for the rest of the recital) and any­way re­as­sur­anc­ing­ly, the sec­ond piece is a fa­mil­iar Latin com­po­si­tion.

The bal­ance of the pro­gramme (four so­los per per­former and four duets) in­cludes two Teague com­po­si­tions (the re­cent A Vis­it to Hell and Rain­drops, a teenage prodi­gy com­po­si­tion) the Win­ter move­ment of Vi­val­di's Four Sea­sons; a Schu­bert ser­e­nade; the First Move­ment of Bach's Vi­o­lin Con­cer­to in A Mi­nor; pieces by De­bussy and Chopin and a cou­ple of Fritz Kreisler's Vi­en­nese Melodies. Tangyuk re­grets not be­ing able to play "some more Ro­man­tic stuff" but ar­gues that that the Ro­man­tic id­iom doesn't tran­scribe well to pan, un­like the Baroque.

Tangyuk brings a life­time's learn­ing and teach­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to the stage. In­spired as a St Mary's stu­dent by choir di­rec­tor Lindyann Bod­den-Rich, he stud­ied pi­ano pri­vate­ly, be­fore go­ing on to Mannes Col­lege of Mu­sic, a small New York con­ser­va­to­ry for a de­gree in Choral Con­duct­ing and then to the world's largest mu­sic school at In­di­ana Uni­ver­si­ty, for his doc­tor­ate. 15 years as Di­rec­tor of Choral Con­duct­ing at Prince­ton pre­pared him for the po­si­tion of con­duc­tor at The Prince­ton Fest, an an­nu­al New Jer­sey arts fes­ti­val fea­tur­ing mu­si­cals and opera.

Lo­cal­ly, he's long been ac­tive as a judge in the Schools' Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, which is how he orig­i­nal­ly met Teague in the ear­ly 1990s, who was then a vi­o­lin­ist in the Na­tion­al Youth Or­ches­tra. Look­ing back over 20 years of the schools' fes­ti­val (which he com­pet­ed in as a young pi­anist) he notes a great im­prove­ment in in­stru­men­tal play­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in pan.

Be­sides com­mend­ing the pan pro­gramme in schools, he al­so sin­gled out the work done by the Holis­tic School of Mu­sic, which cov­ers all mu­sic gen­res but be­moaned the lack of choral pro­grammes for schools in Trinidad, oth­er than at Bish­op Anstey and St Joseph's Con­vent. In­sis­tent that mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion is in it­self holis­tic ( de­vel­op­ing self-dis­ci­pline, ded­i­ca­tion, team­work and a sense of achieve­ment-all in­valu­able life skills) he cites the ex­am­ple of An­na Marie Brima­combe in To­ba­go, who has run a train­ing pro­gramme for teach­ers (from any dis­ci­pline) in choral di­rec­tion. The fruits of this one-woman project were ap­par­ent at this year's schools' fes­ti­val, where To­ba­go choirs swept the board.

The Tangyuk/Teague recital, a tightrope or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chal­lenge, will do­nate part of its pro­ceeds to two char­i­ties: The Guardian's Need­i­est Cas­es Fund and the T&T Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust, which aids young pan­nists and steel­bands; runs work­shops and an af­ter-school pro­gramme for chil­dren in un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties, as well as pro­vid­ing schol­ar­ships for the young and gift­ed. As Tangyuk says: "I just hope peo­ple will come out." If you do, you'll not on­ly be ex­tend­ing your own mu­si­cal range but di­rect­ly con­tribut­ing to a cre­ative and peace­ful new gen­er­a­tion.

Al­though he lives in the US, Richard Tangyuk re­turns home from time to time to con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of the lo­cal clas­si­cal scene.