Ray Funk and An­drew Mar­tin

The North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty Steel­band cel­e­brate the pro­gramme's 40th an­niver­sary this April with a month-long ar­ray of unique con­certs and per­for­mances. The fes­tiv­i­ties be­gan with the NIU Steel­band's an­nu­al spring con­cert on April 13, and will con­tin­ue with five recitals per­formed by NIU steel­pan grad­u­ate stu­dents lat­er in the month.

All the recitals will be we­b­cast from the NIU School of Mu­sic Web site and are sure to of­fer au­di­ences in T&T and the greater steel­band com­mu­ni­ty spread across the globe a glimpse in­to one of Amer­i­ca's pre­mier pan pro­grammes as it marks this im­por­tant mile­stone.

The past year saw NIU steel­band pro­gramme co-di­rec­tors Liam Teague and Cliff Alex­is show­ered with an as­tound­ing num­ber of awards and recog­ni­tion for ex­cel­lence. In No­vem­ber, Cliff Alex­is was in­duct­ed in­to the Per­cus­sive Arts So­ci­ety Hall of Fame, an ho­n­our be­stowed up­on on­ly one oth­er pan­nist–El­lie Man­nette. Dur­ing the fi­nals of the T&T Panora­ma this year Alex­is was one of eight per­sons ho­n­oured for their "ster­ling con­tri­bu­tion to the Steel­band Move­ment."

Mean­while, in Feb­ru­ary, Liam Teague was an­nounced as the 2014 Arts and Let­ters win­ner of the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence. Es­tab­lished in 2005, the Sab­ga award comes with sig­nif­i­cant pres­tige and a con­sid­er­able cash award. For Teague, the award came as quite a sur­prise as he learned of the news while in Trinidad work­ing with Sil­ver Stars on a stun­ning panora­ma arrange­ment of Tony Bar­clay's The Rea­son that earned the band a re­spectable sixth place fin­ish in the Panora­ma fi­nals.

The biggest event of the NIU Steel­band 40th An­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion was the band's spring con­cert held on April 13.

The con­cert was a cel­e­bra­tion of the NIU Steel­band's past, present, and fu­ture. Guest soloists in­clud­ed, among oth­ers, Pana­man­ian vi­o­lin­ist Gra­ciela Nunez who gave a rous­ing ren­di­tion of the Camille Saint Saen's In­tro­duc­tion and Ron­do Capric­cioso.

Nunez was al­so fea­tured, along with Teague, in a per­for­mance of an amaz­ing new piece, a duet for steel­pan and vi­o­lin, Bach Talk, writ­ten by Dr Jan Bach, who came to at­ten­tion in the steel­band world through his Con­cer­to for Steel­pan and Or­ches­tra cham­pi­oned and per­formed the world over by Teague.

The new piece was joint­ly com­mis­sioned through Dean Richard Hol­ly's of­fice at the Col­lege of Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts at NIU and the T&T Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust.

Much of the con­cert pro­gramme was, how­ev­er, a walk down mem­o­ry lane and reper­toire in­clud­ed old band fa­vorites such as Cliff Alex­is' Sum­mer Song and Con­fu­sion Reg­gae, plus his arrange­ment of Pan 2000 which helped the band to earn sec­ond place at the 2000 World Steel­band Fes­ti­val in Trinidad.

Not to be left out, the NIU Steel­band al­so played one of Teague's new­er arrange­ments, Dougla, which is a com­po­si­tion writ­ten for his son, Jaden Teague-Nunez. The band played spec­tac­u­lar­ly and the au­di­ence was en­thu­si­as­tic.

April is al­so the month for the stu­dent recitals and a num­ber of NIU grad­u­ate pan stu­dents are all giv­ing recitals in­clud­ing Christi­na Guer­rero, Emi­ly Lanxn­er, Josanne Fran­cis, Yu­ki Nakano, and Mike Schwe­bke. All of these recitals will be we­b­cast and re­flect a wide range of pieces per­formed on pan.

An amaz­ing­ly di­ver­si­fied se­ries of pan per­for­mances, many of the pieces are col­lab­o­ra­tions with small pan com­bos and in unique pair­ings with oth­er tra­di­tion­al in­stru­ments. From Diego Mar­tin, Josanne Fran­cis is cur­rent­ly serv­ing as the co-di­rec­tor and co-arranger of the NIU All-Uni­ver­si­ty steel­band. She was the win­ner of the 2013 NIU Con­cer­to Com­pe­ti­tion where she per­formed the Jan Bach con­cer­to for steel­pan with the NIU Phil­har­mon­ic on Feb­ru­ary 12.

Fran­cis was a first place win­ner at the Amer­i­can Prot�g� In­ter­na­tion­al Con­cer­to Com­pe­ti­tion and will be per­form­ing on Memo­r­i­al Day, May 26, in New York City at Carnegie Hall, an enor­mous ho­n­our.

She was al­so re­cent­ly the sub­ject of a When Steel Talks Women in Pan pro­file. Fran­cis' recital will fea­ture her arrange­ments of Franz Lizst's Hun­gar­i­an Rhap­sody, Lord Kitch­en­er's Iron Man, and a range of oth­er ma­te­r­i­al.

Khan Cordice from An­tigua, cur­rent­ly co-di­rec­tor NIU All-Uni­ver­si­ty steel­band with Fran­cis, will not be giv­ing a recital this spring but is busy with steel­band-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing the re­cent launch of a Web site, www.khan­cordice.com, per­form­ing as a guest artist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron's steel­band con­cert on April 6, and prepar­ing for an­oth­er round of com­pe­ti­tion in An­tigua.

His arrange­ments for Hell's Gate steel­band have won the An­tigua Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion the past four years. Orig­i­nal­ly a flautist and high wood­winds spe­cial­ist, Christi­na Guer­rero comes from a strong clas­si­cal back­ground to the steel­pan.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, her recital fea­tures a Bach flute piece new­ly arranged for pan by NIU grad­u­ate Ken­neth Joseph in ad­di­tion to an arrange­ment of Lord Kitch­en­er's Bees Melody and some of Liam Teague's orig­i­nal pieces for pan. Guer­rero plans to stay in Illi­nois fol­low­ing grad­u­a­tion to per­form with Potts and Pan Steel­band as well as teach flute and pan.

Yu­ki Nakano is a Japan­ese per­cus­sion­ist who af­ter many years of per­for­mance on xy­lo­phone and marim­ba fell in love with pan. She now teach­es pan and di­rects a steel­band in Japan and has been go­ing down to Trinidad for Panora­ma since 2009. This past year she per­formed with Sil­ver Stars.

Nakano's recital will fea­ture a steel­pan con­cer­to by Ben Wahlund (On­ly When Eter­ni­ty Nears) as well as pieces writ­ten by for­mer NIU per­cus­sion pro­fes­sor Robert Chapell that in­volve pan and tabla drums of In­dia.

Fol­low­ing grad­u­a­tion, Nakano plans to re­turn to Japan to per­form and teach pan. Fol­low Yu­ki Nakano and pan ac­tiv­i­ties in Japan from her Web site www.yu­ki-steel­pan.com.

On April 17, Mike Schwe­bke will give his fi­nal recital at NIU in ful­fill­ment of the re­quire­ments of his Per­form­ers Cer­tifi­cate in steel­pan. Schwe­bke's recital will fea­ture a Chopin tran­scrip­tion, reg­gae, some of Kevin Bobo's new pieces for pan, and two of Robert Chap­pell's pieces for steel­pan.

Fol­low­ing grad­u­a­tion from NIU, Schwe­bke is off to Col­orado to pur­sue fur­ther grad­u­ate stud­ies in per­cus­sion.

Emi­ly Lanxn­er came to NIU to pur­sue her grad­u­ate de­gree in pan af­ter lead­ing a steel­band in Ver­mont for over two decades. She first came to Trinidad in 1983 to play with Des­per­a­does and has since re­turned to Trinidad reg­u­lar­ly for many years.

Lanxn­er's recital will in­clude clas­si­cal adap­ta­tions of pieces by Bach, Bar­tok, and Chopin as well as jazz and Brazil­ian pieces. She will al­so per­form an arrange­ment of St Thomas with el­e­ments of New Or­leans brass band, Hait­ian rara, and pan around the neck.

The NIU con­cert and recital halls are set up for high qual­i­ty we­b­casts that con­sis­tent­ly draw in large crowds for pan events.

These pan we­b­casts are a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to see pan at its best and help cel­e­brate four decades of one of the great pan ed­u­ca­tion ef­forts in Amer­i­ca, a trib­ute to the NIU Steel­band's founder Al O'Con­nor who put in place and de­vel­oped what has be­come Amer­i­ca's best.

Ray Funk is a re­tired Alaskan judge who is pas­sion­ate­ly de­vot­ed to ca­lyp­so, pan and mas. An­drew Mar­tin is an eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist, per­cus­sion­ist, pan­nist, and As­so­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Mu­sic at In­ver Hills Col­lege in St Paul, Min­neso­ta.

NIU Pan we­b­cast events

Vis­it http://www.niu.edu/Mu­sic/me­dia/we­b­casts/in­dex.shtml to hear and see these pan events. Times list­ed are Trinidad time.

To­day, 8:30 pm Mike Schwe­bke grad­u­ate recital

April 19, 1 pm Christi­na Guer­rero grad­u­ate recital

April 19, 9 pm Josanne Fran­cis grad­u­ate recital

Wednes­day April 23, 8:30 pm Yu­ki Nakano grad­u­ate recital

April 27, 7 pm, Emi­ly Lanxn­er grad­u­ate recital