An­ge­lo Mar­celle

Even af­ter tor­ren­tial rains all of last Tues­day evening and most of Wednes­day dur­ing the day, caus­ing floods in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try, many braved the weath­er and came out to Wine & Jazz at Sweet Lime Restau­rant. The pop­u­lar Ari­api­ta Av­enue eatery is one month shy of host­ing its first an­niver­sary of Wine & Jazz. A spe­cial cel­e­bra­tion is be­ing planned, with sev­er­al lo­cal per­form­ers for the event. For those who de­cid­ed to stay home, you cer­tain­ly missed a treat. Ken "Pro­fes­sor" Philmore, ar­guably amongst the three most tal­ent­ed and dy­nam­ic pan soloists in the land, was the fea­tured per­former for the evening.

With a num­ber of ac­co­lades un­der his belt, the vet­er­an pan­nist showed his di­ver­si­ty by play­ing a lot of mu­si­cal gen­res on the na­tion­al in­stru­ment. Main­tain­ing an ami­able con­ver­sa­tion with his en­rap­tured au­di­ence, he said: "I like to mix the mu­sic, es­pe­cial­ly when I am on tour. Peo­ple ap­pre­ci­ate the in­stru­ment more when they hear their own mu­sic." Among the artistes he sam­pled from were Janet Jack­son, Jay Z and The Temp­ta­tions. While many who were din­ing watched and lis­tened to the Pro­fes­sor, there were the oc­ca­sion­al passer­bys who found it ir­re­sistible and stopped on the pave­ment to hear the sweet mu­sic em­a­nat­ing from the Philmore's in­stru­ment.

It was when he played a med­ley of Michael Jack­son's hits, many of those who were from for­eign lands were seen with eye­brows arched up­ward and mouths agape in amaze­ment. Sol­dier Robert To­b­bit fol­lowed with his own Michael Jack­son med­ley, and a num­ber of mu­si­cals and songs usu­al­ly heard at wed­dings. Once a month on a Wednes­day, Wine & Jazz is held at Sweet Lime and a wine is fea­tured. This time it was Canei, spon­sored by Hand Arnold. Pre­vi­ous­ly, wines have been sup­plied by Am­co, Had­co and Bry­dens. Kevon Mar­cellin was the first of many pa­trons who re­ceived com­pli­men­ta­ry bot­tles of wine. The Pro­fes­sor re­turned for his sec­ond ses­sion, open­ing with some so­ca be­fore mov­ing on to My Girl by the Temp­ta­tions. He was joined by Jen­ly Williams for one item by The Car­pen­ters be­fore Lau­re­ston Spe­cial took the mi­cro­phone.

It is cer­tain­ly al­ways an evening for lovers, es­pe­cial­ly when Spe­cial is per­form­ing. This man's heav­en­ly voice and smooth style could make any cou­ple in the val­ley of de­ci­sion-mak­ing about mar­riage, make that to­tal com­mit­ment. He even com­ment­ed that his son was con­ceived when the song he was singing was on the Top 20 charts. Spe­cial was sub­se­quent­ly joined by Mar­cellin and Lu­critia Pierre, with the for­mer re­ceiv­ing sev­er­al rounds of ap­plause for his in­tox­i­cat­ing voice. Al­so per­form­ing on ther evening were Chris Quamie and David Bap­tiste.