?As the open­ing chords pierced the col­lec­tive lis­ten­ing ear of the room, a soul­ful ap­pre­cia­tive moan filled the air. Pa­trons eas­i­ly recog­nised Dean Williams' in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Boyz II Men clas­sic, End of the Road. In one dark­ened cor­ner, a touched soul raised a sin­gle hand in the air, seem­ing­ly tes­ti­fy­ing to the beau­ty of the melody teased out by the lone gui­tarist.

Last Thurs­day, un­der the art­ful­ly placed shad­ows of scent­ed can­dles, a unique chan­de­lier and the watch­ful gaze and dis­cern­ing ears of a full house at Drink! wine bar, lo­cat­ed in Wood­brook, at the cor­ner of Ros­ali­no and Roberts streets, gui­tarist Dean Williams took yet an­oth­er step along the road to be­com­ing Trinidad's first renowned�con­tem­po­rary world beat jazz soloist. In a show­case sim­ply en­ti­tled Dean Williams @ Drink!, the pa­trons were promised an in­ti­mate per­for­mance from the well-known mu­si­cian.

And from the way the au­di­ence sang along and cheered af­ter every com­pli­cat­ed riff, it seems the promise was de­liv­ered. Al­though he per­formed some cov­ers, his orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions like Even­flow, Is­land Breeze and the very groovy world beat tracks, Con­go Jam and Tan­za­nia, tick­led and tan­ta­lised those in at­ten­dance to sway and boo­gie in their seats, as those mag­i­cal fin­gers dis­played just how much in­ge­nu­ity lies be­neath Dean's qui­et de­meanour.

This new step has been long in com­ing–even over­due, some might say. But ac­cord­ing to Dean, "Every­thing hap­pens at the right time and not be­fore," and if those pa­trons at Drink! are any in­di­ca­tion, the on­ly thing more per­fect than the tim­ing was Dean's play­ing dur­ing his well re­ceived dou­ble set. As an ad­di­tion­al sur­prise, the gui­tarist in­vit­ed to the stage Wen­dell Man­war­ren and Roger Roberts of 3Canal to per­form an orig­i­nal Dean Williams' piece en­ti­tled Over The Moun­tain. The soul­ful ren­di­tion by the trio had spir­its soar­ing and tongues re­quest­ing an en­core.

The own­ers of Drink! have un­equiv­o­cal­ly stat­ed that there will be more of Dean, as a so­lo artiste, at their es­tab­lish­ment. Since start­ing out, he has been fea­tured be­side the cr�me de la cr�me in Caribbean en­ter­tain­ment, though he may be best re­mem­bered as the on­ly lead gui­tarist in the world to per­form on Moko Jumbie stilts live on­stage, while he was a mem­ber of so­ca band Xtatik. Now, with 20 years' ex­pe­ri­ence un­der his belt in all gen­res of mu­sic, Dean Williams has ma­tured in­to a mu­si­cal Caribbean Re­nais­sance man with a di­verse loy­al fol­low­ing aged eight to 65, from Sin­ga­pore to South Amer­i­ca.

At present, he is in stu­dio fin­ish­ing up his first few so­lo sin­gles, in­clud­ing a very spe­cial Christ­mas track with Ma$tamind Pro­duc­tions for ear­ly No­vem­ber re­lease. It will al­so be fea­tured on Ma$tamind's very first Christ­mas car­ol al­bum. This song and the up­com­ing sin­gles are off of his yet un­ti­tled de­but so­lo al­bum, which is ex­pect­ed to hit stores in time for 2010's Caribbean Jazz Sea­son. In the mean­time, his in­ten­tions are to con­tin­ue per­form­ing as a so­lo act in and around the Caribbean, while re­main­ing the lead gui­tarist of De­stra's band.