AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin has de­clared that the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) is un­der­go­ing an op­er­a­tional shake-up, as she of­fi­cial­ly launched NA­PA Jazz Fu­sion 2026.

At the launch ear­li­er this week, Ben­jamin said this year’s pro­duc­tion, sched­uled for May 31, is part of her di­rec­tive to the in­sti­tu­tion’s new board to sim­ply “fix it.”

Speak­ing in the NA­PA lob­by, she praised the board for act­ing on that man­date, not­ing that it has al­ready led to in­ter­nal re­struc­tur­ing and stronger stake­hold­er en­gage­ment.

“Over the last sev­er­al months, the new­ly ap­point­ed board… had dif­fi­cult wa­ters to chart. They had to put things in place… A lot of things are hap­pen­ing in this space and per­sons did not know it was hap­pen­ing,” Ben­jamin said.

As part of strength­en­ing the cul­tur­al sec­tor, Ben­jamin al­so sig­nalled in­creased in­vest­ment, telling NA­PA chair­man Ken­ny Phillips that the in­sti­tu­tion could ex­pect “a lit­tle boost in fund­ing.”

“Cul­ture must evolve. Our in­sti­tu­tions must evolve and more im­por­tant­ly, the ways in which we en­gage au­di­ences, com­mu­ni­cate val­ue and cre­ate mem­o­rable cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ences must al­so evolve,” she added.

Phillips echoed the min­is­ter’s po­si­tion, say­ing his ear­ly fo­cus as chair­man was mod­ernising and bet­ter util­is­ing NA­PA’s fa­cil­i­ties to func­tion as a mul­ti-venue cul­tur­al hub.

“NA­PA is not just what you see. There’s a lot more. In fact, it is the pre­mier space in the Caribbean,” Phillips said.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra artis­tic di­rec­tor Mia Gor­mandy-Ben­jamin said this year’s show­case will ex­pand both in scale and ex­pe­ri­ence, with the event mov­ing out­doors in­to the NA­PA court­yard as a pre­mi­um, se­mi-all-in­clu­sive pro­duc­tion.

“This cel­e­bra­tion of sound is go­ing to take place in mul­ti­ple ways,” she said. “Not on­ly are we look­ing at our lo­cal in­flu­ences, but al­so Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al sounds.”

She con­firmed that the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra and the Na­tion­al Phil­har­mon­ic Or­ches­tra will head­line the pro­duc­tion un­der the di­rec­tion of Dr Roger Hen­ry, along­side per­for­mances from Char­maine Forde, Le­An­dra, and a cadre of lo­cal artistes, in­clud­ing Chris­to, Shar­da Patasar, Ter­ri Lyons, Dane Gul­ston, Neval Chate­lal and Jo­hann Chucka­ree.

All per­for­mances will align with this year’s theme, The Evo­lu­tion of Caribbean Jazz.

Ac­cord­ing to or­gan­is­ers, NA­PA Jazz Fu­sion 2026 has built a con­sis­tent and grow­ing au­di­ence over the past six years, steadi­ly es­tab­lish­ing it­self as one of its flag­ship cul­tur­al pro­duc­tions.

The event has con­tin­ued to at­tract strong en­gage­ment from cul­tur­al pa­trons, mu­sic en­thu­si­asts, and cor­po­rate stake­hold­ers.

With this year’s re­vised out­door for­mat and ex­pand­ed pro­gram­ming, or­gan­is­ers say there will al­so be a de­lib­er­ate fo­cus on youth de­vel­op­ment through the in­clu­sion of emerg­ing artists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT).

The UTT Jazz En­sem­ble and UTT Pan En­sem­ble will fea­ture promi­nent­ly, bring­ing to­geth­er young mu­si­cians trained in both tra­di­tion­al and con­tem­po­rary styles.

Their par­tic­i­pa­tion is ex­pect­ed to add a fresh di­men­sion to the pro­duc­tion, as steel­pan and jazz are wo­ven to­geth­er in­to what or­gan­is­ers de­scribe as a uni­fied cul­tur­al ta­pes­try, re­flect­ing both the aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing and evolv­ing cre­ative ex­pres­sion of the next gen­er­a­tion of per­form­ers.