Sean Nero

Nine-year-old vo­cal­ist Leno­va Ramel­la did not take home the top prize in the Broad­way Mu­si­cal Songs cat­e­go­ry at Thurs­day's stag­ing of the 29th Bi­en­ni­al T&T Mu­sic Fes­ti­val held at Queen's Hall in St Ann's, Port-of-Spain, but the re­spect and adu­la­tion she won from pa­trons, con­tes­tants and the ad­ju­di­ca­tor will sure­ly make her feel the cham­pi­on. Ap­pear­ing at po­si­tion four on the evening's pro­gramme which fea­tured eleven con­tes­tants in Class 5–Broad­way Mu­si­cal Songs–Fe­male (Fi­nals) the stan­dard two stu­dent of the Mara­cas Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist School in St Joseph, took the spot­light and con­vinced her cap­tive au­di­ence that she was the or­phan "An­nie" in the mu­si­cal by the same name. Judg­ing from her de­meanour Ramel­la seemed com­fort­able ren­der­ing the theme song ti­tled "To­mor­row." At the end of her per­for­mance, ad­ju­di­ca­tor Dr John Paul John­son joined the large au­di­ence in ap­plaud­ing the mem­o­rable pre­sen­ta­tion.

The Broad­way Mu­si­cal Songs cat­e­go­ry usu­al­ly fea­tured vo­cal­ists in their late teens and adult con­tes­tants. Pa­trons ap­peared stunned when this mu­sic dar­ling stepped in­to the spot­light at the pre­sen­ter's call. She was poised with an au­ra of con­fi­dence that be­lied her age. Glanc­ing at mu­sic teacher and ac­com­pa­nist Dar­rel Daniel, Ramel­la com­menced her en­ter­tain­ment of­fer­ing be­fore a cap­tive au­di­ence. Main­tain­ing oc­ca­sion­al eye con­tact with the ac­com­pa­nist at in­ter­vals dur­ing the per­for­mance, where the tem­po changed, il­lus­trat­ed her good stage tech­nique which en­sured that the per­for­mance was mu­si­cal­ly and rhyth­mi­cal­ly sound. Dur­ing her time in the spot­light Ramel­la al­so demon­strat­ed an ex­cel­lent com­mand of her space with cute ex­pres­sions that added to the pre­sen­ta­tion.

The Broad­way Mu­si­cal Songs class was usu­al­ly a favourite among mu­sic lovers. The thun­der­ous ap­plause did not faze Ramel­la who gave them a per­for­mance to re­mem­ber. "If there was a spe­cial prize I could give to you I would," said John­son. Pa­trons re­spond­ed in the af­fir­ma­tive. Con­tes­tants in this cat­e­go­ry of­fered a de­light­ful 10-song reper­toire that had pa­trons rapt. Marielle Coop­er-Leach chose "Easy As Life" from Ai­da, while Her­mi­na Charles opt­ed for "Mem­o­ry," the theme from Cats. Sum­mer­time from Por­gy and Bess was Llette­sha Sylvester's sea­son-of-choice. While Althea Oliv­er went look­ing for "The Man I Love," from George Gersh­win, Joan­na Ross had some­thing else on her mind singing "I'll Show Him," from Plain and Fan­cy and Ger­maine Wil­son was busy keep­ing se­crets with 'Don't Tell Ma­ma' from Cabaret. Ger­maine Wil­son did Ade­laide's Lament from Guys and Dolls.

Reach­ing in­to the reper­toire of The Sound of Mu­sic, Karen Hold­er de­liv­ered "The Lone­ly Goatherd," while Jean­nine Clarke and Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray went head to head to de­liv­er the most con­vinc­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Poor Un­for­tu­nate Soul tak­en from the Lit­tle Mer­maid. "Even go­ing to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera au­di­tions, have I ever been to one that was so in­tense,'' said John­son re­fer­ring to the high lev­el of the com­pe­ti­tion. "It's in­spir­ing to me, some­one who has done way too much mu­si­cal the­atre in my life, to hear and see peo­ple who–whether it's the train­ing or nat­u­ral­ly have got style–de­liv­er char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions on stage that were mind-bog­gling."