Si­mon Lee

"Have wings? Let's fly to the moon and be­yond" might well have been a suit­able slo­gan for last Sun­day's Bird­song va­ca­tion camp clos­ing con­cert at Queen's Hall. The packed au­di­ence (ad­mit­ted­ly par­ti­san of fam­i­ly and friends) was treat­ed to a pro­gramme which by any mu­si­cal stan­dards must rank as su­perb.

The ti­tle of the con­cert, Against the Flow, apt­ly sum­marised the Bird­song an­i­ma or guid­ing spir­it–com­mu­ni­ty as agents not de­pen­dents; ex­cel­lence through hard work, dis­ci­pline and co-op­er­a­tion, ris­ing high above the swamp of medi­oc­rity.

While this is a con­cert re­view, it would be re­miss not to high­light the Bird­song ex­am­ple of so­cial re-en­gi­neer­ing. What be­gan in a pa­n­yard 40 years ago has blos­somed in­to the mod­el of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment our po­lit­i­cal lead­ers are still fum­bling for. The hor­ren­dous irony is that Bird­song re­mains un­der­fund­ed, ne­glect­ed and large­ly ig­nored by the es­tab­lish­ment, while mil­lions are squan­dered or sim­ply stolen from the pat­ri­mo­ny.

But let the mu­sic speak for it­self. The en­tire pro­gramme, as car­ried by chil­dren, 12 to 18 years old, mem­bers of the Bird­song Acad­e­my found­ed in 2004. The com­plete range from novice to bud­ding vir­tu­oso was rep­re­sent­ed, and be­sides the two Bird­song schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ents–Ny­ol Man­swell, the blind vo­cal­ist and Der­ri­ane Dyette, who will short­ly be com­plet­ing stud­ies abroad–there was ev­i­dence of a whole new co­hort of young mu­si­cians ready for flight across the mu­si­cal world.

The Acad­e­my Or­ches­tra, com­pris­ing pan, wood­wind, brass and strings and front­ed by the choir, opened with a tru­ly mem­o­rable ren­di­tion of the na­tion­al an­them, fol­lowed by the far less per­formed God Bless Our Na­tion. There was a crisp­ness and pro­fes­sion­al­ism matched by a clean sound mix, which im­me­di­ate­ly alert­ed the au­di­ence to the lev­el of per­for­mance they could an­tic­i­pate.

First soloist up, 12-year-old Co­by Fletch­er, who'd prob­a­bly nev­er heard of JS Bach be­fore he be­gan the va­ca­tion camp, man­ful­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed the high­er reg­is­ter of Thou Prince of Life, over­com­ing nerves, pitch wob­bles and the oc­ca­sion­al croak to em­body the first les­son any per­form­ing artist must mas­ter: con­tin­ue, what­ev­er. The ova­tion he re­ceived was as much for his spir­it as his abil­i­ty. The ju­nior pans backed by brass gave us Hen­ry Manci­ni's Cha­rade, with a slow tem­po al­low­ing in­di­vid­ual pans to be heard with clar­i­ty. It was heart­en­ing to see a young girl on French horn, a pre­lude to many sur­pris­es, chal­leng­ing gen­der and eth­nic bar­ri­ers as well as mu­si­cal stereo­types.

By the time the ju­niors hit Pharell Williams' Hap­py, they were cook­ing, swing­ing and smil­ing, hand­clap­ping in bridges to the syn­co­pat­ed rhythm. The ju­nior gui­tars show­cased tech­nique with Fin­ger Style Form in C be­fore con­vert­ing ex­er­cis­es in­to the up­beat bossa feel of Bob­by Wom­ack's Breezin. The se­nior gui­tars delved in­to our folk trove with a med­ley segu­ing from Kitch's take on Old La­dy (Walk a Mile), to sig­na­ture song of the night, Fly Me to the Moon. Their sec­ond of­fer­ing–the folk­song Every Time I Pass–was led by a young girl on elec­tric bass and their ren­di­tion would have made kaiso jazz pi­o­neer Clive Zan­da proud.

The Ju­nior pans re­sumed with an in-house arrange­ment by Ri­car­do Per­sad of Tea for Two, re­worked in Afro-Cuban style as a cha cha cha, a la Tom­my Dorsey. Jump­ing near­ly a cen­tu­ry, we were brought up to date with the best pan in­ter­pre­ta­tion I've heard of Bun­ji's Dif­fer­en­tol­ogy, with some in­ter­est­ing tonal and melod­ic im­pro­vi­sa­tions.

With en­er­gy ris­ing, yet an­oth­er Bird­song in­no­va­tion was un­leashed in the form of a tas­sa group, which made its en­trance on the up­per gallery, be­fore skil­ful­ly ne­go­ti­at­ing the stairs down through the au­di­to­ri­um and up on­to the stage. De­fy­ing gen­der and eth­nic stereo­types, the tas­sa group was led by Afro-Cre­ole Can­dy Mor­gan on cut­ter, sup­port­ed by an­oth­er girl cut­ter, Sha­nia James; un­sur­pris­ing­ly they re­ceived a roar of ap­proval and the re­view of our Trinidad rhyth­mic roots con­tin­ued with voice and the skin of African in El­la An­dall's Rhythm of A Peo­ple ("to shake the liv­ing and raise the dead").

Mr Suavi­to him­self, Ny­ol Man­swell, con­duct­ed the Acad­e­my Voic­es, full of soar­ing har­monies to match their sway­ing bod­ies, for Rise and the tra­di­tion­al John Boulay.

At this stage in the pro­gramme the Bird­song achieve­ment was ra­di­ant: here was a group of or­di­nary kids, ef­fort­less­ly de­liv­er­ing the ex­tra­or­di­nary and glow­ing with the ful­fil­ment of tal­ent nur­tured and ma­tured through team­work. I have to con­fess that by now the mu­sic had me in tears, joy­ful all the way. Ap­pro­pri­ate­ly enough the first half reached its cli­max with the pan­side's ren­di­tion of Hap­pi­est Man Alive–with a small boy whose head bare­ly crest­ed the con­gas, lead­ing the rhythm his body was danc­ing, his smile a pal­pa­ble ex­pres­sion of the vibe he was both agent and par­tic­i­pant of.

Pa­co and Dave and Andy Nar­rell's Ba­by Steps gave full range to com­plex tech­nique in terms of Latin feel, polyrhythm and de­mand­ing fast tem­po.

All the promise of the first half was stun­ning­ly re­sumed af­ter the in­ter­mis­sion with an­oth­er lev­el of achieve­ment Bird­song and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty can be proud of. William Pfaff, com­pos­er and SUNY Platts­burg pro­fes­sor, led the in­au­gur­al per­for­mance of the New Mu­sic En­sem­ble in the spe­cial­ly com­mis­sioned A Bal­lad for Bird­song. Pfaff com­posed and re­hearsed the piece in a min­i­mal time­frame, ex­tend­ing Bird­song's range in­to the realm of new (clas­si­cal) mu­sic, unique­ly com­bin­ing pan with brass in a mi­nor key, to the ac­com­pa­ni­ment of wood­wind. How­ev­er short, this piece marks a new era for Bird­song and lo­cal mu­si­cians. The per­for­mance em­phat­i­cal­ly demon­strat­ed the abil­i­ty of T&T mu­si­cians to per­form at the cut­ting edge of in­ter­na­tion­al ex­per­i­men­tal mu­sic. Pfaff, along with Sarah Han­ni­gan of Oak­land Uni­ver­si­ty, shared clas­si­cal ex­per­tise which was ea­ger­ly ab­sorbed by the young­sters. The Bird­song di­as­po­ra con­tin­ues to evolve ex­po­nen­tial­ly.

Al­low­ing for no break in mo­men­tum Acad­e­my Brass wowed with three Leonard Bern­stein com­po­si­tions from West Side Sto­ry: Cool, Maria and Some­thing's Com­ing, be­fore a tal­ent-drip­ping ag­gre­gate of the Small En­sem­ble (with­out their usu­al leader Raf Robert­son) gave us a set which would have been well re­ceived at the Vil­lage Van­guard, New York's pre­mier jaz­zspot. Der­ri­anne Dyette treat­ed us to her dis­tinc­tive aton­al de­liv­ery on the open­ing (All of we is) Fam­i­ly, which served as an in­tro to an­oth­er Bird­song dis­cov­ery–the in­cred­i­bly ma­ture jazz blues voice of 18-year-old Raesh­ma Kissoon, de­liv­er­ing that fa­mous ta­ban­ca song You Don't Call Me Any More, with all the panache of Amy Wine­house meet­ing Aretha Franklyn and Ja­nis Joplin on high heels. Jas­mine Adams was more than equal to the de­mands of Jo­bim's Dinde, de­light­ful­ly scat­ting off Der­ri­anne's pan as pre­lude to the in­stru­men­tal highs of Der­ri­ane's arrange­ment of the Bud Pow­ell com­po­si­tion Wail and the cli­mac­tic Ras Shory I's Who God Bless.

With the full house ramp­ing be­hind them the Acad­e­my Or­ches­tra closed the show and brought down the pow­er with a folk­song med­ley, Bruno Mars' Trea­sure, Let It Go (from the Dis­ney movie Frozen) and Clive Bradley's Ah Goin an Par­ty Tonight.

And what a par­ty it was. Pa­trons any­where in the world would have been ec­sta­t­ic at what they'd wit­nessed. T&T should not on­ly be proud of the whole Bird­song phe­nom­e­non fly­ing in the face of lost youth, the cul­ture of cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism and medi­oc­rity, but it should recog­nise what it does have and sup­port it. It is nev­er too late to be­come what you might have been; this is the hope Bird­song gives.

Now maybe the State will sup­port some re­al in­vest­ment in the fu­ture by mak­ing Bird­song a flag­ship so­cial project, ca­pa­ble of trans­form­ing the so­ci­ety, launch­ing lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reers and es­tab­lish­ing a re­al foun­da­tion for a cul­tur­al in­dus­try.