De­vi­ka Ram­lochan

The An­gli­can Church of the Dio­cese of Trinidad and To­ba­go host­ed its of­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ny for the launch of its first mu­sic school on Ju­ly 24 at the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral, Port-of-Spain. The cre­ative and in­no­v­a­tive idea of a mu­sic school was ini­ti­at­ed by Keisha Bais­den who has spe­cialised in the area of mu­sic ther­a­py, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi, Flori­da. Bais­den had sev­er­al meet­ings for ap­proval of this school and was suc­cess­ful in at­tain­ing sup­port and even­tu­al ap­proval by An­gli­can Bish­op Calvin Bess who for­mal­ly launched the mu­sic school. Bish­op Bess said the idea would pro­duce some­thing of great val­ue to the Dio­cese, not on­ly from an An­gli­can sense but for the in­ter­na­tion­al Dio­cese as well.

The mis­sion of the mu­sic is to de­vel­op the mu­si­cal skills and tal­ents of young peo­ple, al­low­ing them to be more ex­pres­sive and to ex­plore their tal­ents, as well as pro­mot­ing a deep sense of Chris­t­ian so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The school's goals in­clude ed­u­cat­ing and train­ing young peo­ple in mu­sic the­o­ry, vo­cal and in­stru­men­tal tech­niques as well as the nur­tur­ing of the over­all de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal youth. The school al­so in­tends es­tab­lish­ing and im­ple­ment­ing an out­reach pro­gramme, tar­get­ing young peo­ple in the wider com­mu­ni­ty. Bish­ops Claude Berkley and Calvin Bess have en­cour­aged, sup­port­ed and ad­vis­es ra­tio­nale of ini­ti­at­ing the project and look for­ward to high qual­i­ty and vi­bran­cy in the mu­sic which com­ple­ments wor­ship. In stat­ing that mu­sic is a pow­er­ful av­enue to val­ue the mu­si­cal her­itage of our na­tion, Bess said it was al­so the cen­tre of ex­cel­lence where every­one could feel in­volved. This was al­so demon­strat­ed in the cel­e­bra­tion of the launch, held out­side the church, and was a ma­jor high­light to mark this spe­cial oc­ca­sion.

There were sounds of pan by the St Mar­garet Boys' AC Steel Or­ches­tra, singing per­for­mances by the East­ern Per­form­ing Arts Fra­ter­ni­ty and African drum­ming by the Trin­i­ty Drum­ming En­sem­ble. The cel­e­bra­tion con­tin­ued in­side the Cathe­dral, where Bish­op Berkley wel­comed his guests, fol­lowed by an opera per­for­mance by Anne Fridal. Richard Owen read the com­mit­tee re­port, and spoke about this pi­lot project, iden­ti­fy­ing chal­lenges, rec­ti­fy­ing any is­sues and mak­ing the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments to the pro­gramme. He al­so stressed on the pro­mo­tion of high qual­i­ty prais­es to God via mu­sic. Owen be­lieves that mu­sic, a pow­er­ful medi­um to Christ, has pow­er, while trans­form­ing and en­rich­ing hu­man lives for the bet­ter­ment of the youths of to­mor­row but most all for to­day. Guests were al­so en­ter­tained with a re­li­gious singing per­for­mance by John Thomas and vi­o­lin­ist Keisha Bais­den.

The evening's fea­ture ad­dress was de­liv­ered by pro­fes­sor Dr Ian Robert­son, aca­d­e­m­ic di­rec­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. His idea is for the pro­mo­tion of high­er qual­i­ty of wor­ship, ac­cord­ing to fun­da­men­tal rules and un­der­stand­ing of the Chris­t­ian church and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for bring­ing out the best for the ben­e­fit of all. Bish­op Bess then de­clared the for­mal launch of its mu­sic school. The school opens class­es next month, with tu­ition tak­ing place in six dif­fer­ent re­gions. Tu­ition will be for string in­stru­ments, key­board in­stru­ments and steel­pan. The youths of this mu­sic fra­ter­ni­ty showed their style not on­ly in their mu­si­cal en­ter­tain­ment for the launch but al­so in the decor of the church. Even the old­er at­ten­dees were over­heard com­ment­ing on the beau­ti­ful dis­co lights and fog ma­chine, adding that it brought a burst of en­er­gy in the church. This new unique ap­proach, some said, was a sign of new blood that is wel­come and ad­mired. The el­ders show­ered their bless­ings on the younger gen­er­a­tion, look­ing for­ward to even more ex­cite­ment and cel­e­bra­tion of its fu­ture mu­si­cal suc­cess via their great skills and tal­ents.