Wes­ley Gib­bings

Pan Trin­ba­go vice pres­i­dent, Bri­an Ser­rette, rather cu­ri­ous­ly as­sert­ed at the open­ing of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) pro­duced Mal­lets, Brass and Steel con­cert on June 13 that "in or­der for it (pan) to take its place, it must be able to be played along­side oth­er in­stru­ments."

The per­for­mance of Su­per­novas Steel Or­ches­tra along­side the Per­cus­sion En­sem­ble of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware (UD) and the UTT Brass En­sem­ble how­ev­er went on to con­firm the long-es­tab­lished cre­den­tials of pan as an in­stru­ment in its own right. Few would have thought there was a ques­tion to an­swer or cre­den­tials to be de­ter­mined.

The Am­rit Sama­roo-led band from Lopinot won in the Small Band cat­e­go­ry of the an­nu­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion in 2014 and, in 2016, is ex­pect­ed to skip straight through to the Big Band con­test– just six years af­ter its for­ma­tion.

So, when the com­bined en­sem­ble of mal­let, brass and steel took the stage for Lord Kitch­en­er's Pan in A Mi­nor there was no con­test to de­ter­mine the bona fides of well-es­tab­lished mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, on­ly an en­ter­tain­ing min­gling of di­verse mu­si­cal dis­ci­plines.

The vi­bra­phone and tenor pan con­versed in fa­mil­iar tones through­out the evening's per­for­mance, par­tic­u­lar­ly when UD as­so­ciate mu­sic pro­fes­sor Har­vey Price played so­lo on Chick Corea's Spain and found equal­ly com­pe­tent re­spons­es from pan­nist Mia Gor­mandy and trom­bon­ist, UTT lec­tur­er, Aiden Cham­ber­lain.

It was the high­light of an evening that brought out a size­able au­di­ence at The­atre 1, Na­pa, with many pa­trons hav­ing to stand through­out the 90-minute con­cert.

The UTT Brass En­sem­ble, un­der the di­rec­tion of Kay Gain­ham, de­liv­ered a crisp ren­di­tion of Jim Park­er's Lon­don­er in New York: Cen­tral Park, Ra­dio City fol­lowed by a fan­tas­tic ver­sion of Catch­ing Shad­ows, a nos­tal­gic melody com­posed by the enig­mat­ic Amer­i­can per­cus­sion­ist, Ivan Trevi­no.

The com­bined en­sem­ble would lat­er re­turn with an Am­rit Sama­roo arrange­ment of Quim­bara, a big-band Afro-Cuban song made pop­u­lar by the late Cuban singer Celia Cruz and com­posed by Ju­nior Cepe­da.

The groups fol­lowed up with Song of Lopinot com­posed by pan mae­stro, Jit Sama­roo. Lopinot's haunt­ing made-for-pan re­frain, arranged by trom­bon­ist Cham­ber­lain, bare­ly had time to set­tle in by the time bari­ton­ist, Kris­son Joseph took the stage fol­low­ing a dreamy in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Be­same Mu­cho played by Su­per­novas.

Joseph brought some mem­bers of the au­di­ence to their feet with Think­ing out Loud fol­lowed by a spir­it­ed ren­di­tion of his fa­ther, The Mighty Pen­guin's un­for­get­tably naughty com­po­si­tion The Slip­per. Some in the crowd want­ed an en­core, ca­lyp­so tent style. The show could have been named Mal­lets, Brass, Steel and Voice–a big one at that.

By that time, Su­per­novas had al­ready been joined by the UD per­cus­sion­ists and UTT Brass, set­ting things up for a grand fi­nale in the form of a mem­o­rable Cham­ber­laine arrange­ment of Giuseppe Ver­di's Over­ture to the Force of Des­tiny, orig­i­nal­ly com­posed for strings and brass, but ren­dered on the oc­ca­sion by a per­cus­sive fu­sion con­duct­ed by Ben Jack­son.

In the end, the on­ly cre­den­tials es­tab­lished were the suc­cess­ful ro­manc­ing of mal­lets, brass, steel, voice and sus­tained ap­plause.