Car­ol Quash

If fo­cus, sac­ri­fice and de­ter­mi­na­tion are what it takes to suc­ceed, then 20-year-old Ker­ri-Ann Chan­dler will con­tin­ue to be a force to be reck­oned with in the mu­sic world. Just out of her teens, the pan­nist has al­ready com­plet­ed a Bach­e­lor of Arts (BA) de­gree in mu­sic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), is a full-time mu­si­cian with the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra, and teach­es at Glen Wor­rel's Mu­sic School in Barataria. Chan­dler has al­so made her mark in the pan world, play­ing with bands such as with UWI Fes­ti­val Steel En­sem­ble, Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra, Sforza­ta, Rene­gades and West Side Steel Or­ches­tra in To­ba­go. She is cur­rent­ly do­ing a stint with Diego Mar­tin-based West Stars. "I try to keep a sched­ule and stick to it, or else things get over­whelm­ing," Chan­dler said.

Ful­fil­ment

But de­spite all her achieve­ments, the ob­vi­ous­ly ac­com­plished yet mod­est pan­nist said she still had a lot more to do. With as­pi­ra­tions not lim­it­ed to lo­cal soil, she will soon be head­ing to Full Sail Uni­ver­si­ty in Or­lan­do, Flori­da, to pur­sue a BA in Record­ing Arts. Why an­oth­er BA and not a sec­ond de­gree in mu­sic? "Mu­sic is my pas­sion, but I find my­self more drawn to the stu­dio as­pect of it: record­ing, com­pos­ing and pro­duc­tion. Al­though I play pan, it has al­ways been with a group. By my­self, I'm stage shy and I like the back­ground. Maybe that's why I chose stu­dio." Chan­dler com­plet­ed lev­els one and two in Sound Record­ing at Laven­tille Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute and says she fell in love with it. "I told my­self, yes! I could wake up every Mon­day morn­ing and do this job."

She said an­oth­er de­cid­ing fac­tor in her choice was ver­sa­til­i­ty.

"Whether I re­turn home or not at the end of my stud­ies, I want to be ver­sa­tile and com­pet­i­tive enough for the job mar­ket." While she al­so played the pi­ano, Chan­dler said she felt more ful­filled play­ing the pan. "I have been play­ing the pi­ano since I was four and I have ac­tu­al­ly reached grade eight lev­el. I start­ed play­ing pan in 2002 and found it easy be­cause of my back­ground in mu­sic. I play the tenor and six base."

Pri­or­i­ties in­tact

Chan­dler says she would love to learn to play the sax­o­phone, and could not hold back a fit of laugh­ter when asked what was pre­vent­ing her from do­ing so. "This is St Vin­cent Street right? You know Si­mon's? Ask them how much a sax costs," she said, adding that what­ev­er mon­ey she earned was stashed away to help pay for her next ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­suit. "Buy­ing a sax­o­phone would take away from my pri­or­i­ties. From a young age, I have been taught that every­thing in life is there to take and the on­ly per­son that can get in your way is you.

"I try to be in­de­pen­dent and earn what I have be­cause when you work hard for what you have, you have a bet­ter ap­pre­ci­a­tion of it." But Chan­dler ad­mit­ted the sup­port of her par­ents was one of her fun­da­men­tal mo­ti­va­tion­al fac­tors. "My par­ents have al­ways sup­port­ed me, es­pe­cial­ly in my ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­suits. "I have to ad­mit that fam­i­ly sup­port is an im­por­tant fac­tor and not every young per­son has that."