Shel­don Os­borne

The Ly­di­an Singers will present the South­ern Caribbean pre­miere of Misa Cubana (Cuban Mass) for Christ­mas 2010, the work of con­tem­po­rary Cuban pi­anist and com­pos­er Jose Maria Vi­ti­er, but with an ex­cit­ing Tri­ni twist: The pans of Wit­co Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra will re­place the or­ches­tra's vi­o­lins. Misa Cubana has been per­formed in Eu­rope, North Amer­i­ca, Mex­i­co, and of course Cu­ba, but on the week­end of De­cem­ber 9, it would be the first time that Vi­ti­er's work will be per­formed in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

At a press con­fer­ence last Mon­day, held at Bish­op Anstey High School in Port-of-Spain, Ly­di­ans di­rec­tor Pat Bish­op de­scribed Vi­ti­er as one of Cu­ba's "best known com­posers, recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for the high qual­i­ty of his work." Bish­op ex­plained that Vi­ti­er's work is strong­ly in­flu­enced by the var­i­ous forms of Cuban mu­sic and Jazz, and it "cre­ative­ly as­sim­i­lates the clas­si­cal Eu­ro­pean Baroque tra­di­tions." She added: "The orig­i­nal­i­ty of this mu­sic lies in the com­pos­er's abil­i­ty to draw to­geth­er a Cuban mu­sic de­rived from the many gen­res in which it is root­ed."

Bish­op al­so de­scribed Misa Cubana as a work that us­es the set­ting of a tra­di­tion­al Catholic Mass ded­i­cat­ed to La Vir­gen de la Cari­dad del Co­bre (the Vir­gin of Char­i­ty of Co­bre), the pa­tron saint of Cu­ba. She fur­ther re­vealed that sev­er­al pieces of the work were in­ter­pret­ed for the late Pope John Paul II when he vis­it­ed Cu­ba. Misa Cubana is just the lat­est of sev­er­al Misas (Mass­es) pre­sent­ed by the Ly­di­an Singers over the last two decades, in­clud­ing Ein Deutsches Re­quiem, a Ger­man mass for the dead by Jo­hannes Brahms in the year 2000; and Misa Criol­la, an Ar­gen­tine mass by Ariel Ramirez in 2008.

How­ev­er, there is a first-time chal­lenge to be faced by the Ly­di­ans with the pro­duc­tion of Misa Cubana. It is the first time that the choir will be per­form­ing in the pres­ence of a liv­ing leg­endary com­pos­er. The Ly­di­an Singers have been work­ing di­rect­ly with the com­pos­er and with mem­bers of the lo­cal Cuban com­mu­ni­ty (in­clud­ing the Cuban Em­bassy) in the stag­ing of this pro­duc­tion. The Ly­di­an Singers will be ac­com­pa­nied by their or­ches­tra, which in­cludes Ly­di­an Steel; key­boardists Lindy Ann Bod­den-Ritch, Myr­tle Cum­ber­bach, Shel­don Morales, and Jerome Din­chong. Per­cus­sion­ists Xavier Phillip and Kr­ish­na Soogrim-Ram will ac­com­pa­ny the or­ches­tra with African and Tas­sa drums.

The pro­duc­tion will al­so fea­ture dancers from the Meta­mor­pho­sis Dance Com­pa­ny, and cel­e­brat­ed Ly­di­ans' soloists Ed­die Cum­ber­bach, Dirk Govia, Joanne Pyle, Gle­nis Year­wood, Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray, and Adafi Pad­more. Misa Cubana be­gins at Queens Hall, St Ann's Port-of-Spain on De­cem­ber 9 in the height of Christ­mas fes­tiv­i­ties, and con­tin­ues un­til De­cem­ber 12. Tick­ets are avail­able at The Sig­na­ture Col­lec­tion at the Nor­mandie, La Trop­i­cale Flower Shop, or from Ly­di­an and Des­per­a­does mem­bers.