Sean Nero

A two-hour pan mu­sic pre­sen­ta­tion at Mon­day's 29th Bi­en­ni­al T&T Mu­sic Fes­ti­val at Queen's Hall, St Ann's, has mu­sic ad­ju­di­ca­tor Dr John Paul John­son con­vinced that he made the right choice in ac­cept­ing the in­vi­ta­tion to pre­side over this year's event.

He's to­day per­suad­ed that this coun­try's mu­sic-mak­ing po­ten­tial is rich. "What I saw to­day... if that is any in­di­ca­tion of what it's like here in T&T, is phe­nom­e­nal. It's some of the best mu­sic de­vel­op­ment skills I have seen any­where that I've been around the world," John­son said, af­ter wit­ness­ing 18 con­tes­tants in Class 32 Steel­pan So­lo–Fi­nals, fea­tur­ing con­tes­tants 12 and un­der." He added: "What I saw over­all was great mu­si­cian­ship be­ing de­vel­oped. Stu­dents are learn­ing how to play phras­es and learn­ing how to play ac­cu­rate­ly–re­al­ly, try­ing to play in the style that the com­pos­er had in mind.

"The good thing about this for the most part is that near­ly all of the stu­dents were able to read mu­sic to do what they do. Most of them are very good with both mal­lets. "It's lent to them even be­ing able to play more mu­si­cal­ly than I had sus­pect­ed." Each com­peti­tor had the free­dom to se­lect a tune of choice that helped to en­sure that the day's mu­si­cal out­pour­ing was di­verse.

The au­di­ence heard 15 mu­sic items that in­clud­ed the mu­sic of Rossi­ni and Mozart, but most in­ter­est­ing­ly the late lo­cal mu­si­cian Win­nifred Atwell. While the pan mu­sic show­case was dom­i­nat­ed by fe­male con­tes­tants, the boys in this class were re­spon­si­ble for turn­ing on and sus­tain­ing the mu­si­cal heat. Asked about the reper­toire pre­sent­ed, John­son replied: "It was amaz­ing. Each com­peti­tor, I'm as­sum­ing, along with their teach­ers chose that lit­er­a­ture and they were very strong choic­es for them. "I thought the choic­es of clas­si­cal mu­sic are so chal­leng­ing and so dif­fi­cult for them and it re­al­ly builds their skills."

Eigh­teen ju­nior pan­nists placed their mu­si­cal stamp dur­ing per­for­mances in Class 32 Steel­pan So­lo–Fi­nals, but it was Eli­jah Lee's de­liv­ery of an ex­cerpt from Rossi­ni's William Tell Over­ture, that won favour with John­son with a score of 98.

Re­sults

?1. Eli­jah Lee, 98

2. Nicholas Navar­ro, 97

2. Luke Walk­er, 97

3. Shenelle George, 96

3. Nathaniel Alexan­der, 96