Mark Lyn­der­say

The pi­anist reeks of ex­pe­ri­ence. Whip thin with long, slen­der age-weath­ered fin­gers, he sits be­hind the ivory-hued grand pi­ano with the el­e­gant com­fort of a king grown com­fort­able with this par­tic­u­lar throne.

But for Fe­lix Roach, it's al­ways been a po­si­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, not a place for the proud.

He be­gan play­ing at the age of sev­en, and asked how long it's been since then he de­murs from of­fer­ing a num­ber with a smile.

"As long as I can re­mem­ber," he says.

The teenage Roach was smit­ten by a young woman his fa­ther saw on­ly as trou­ble, so he sent his son off to the Berkelee Col­lege of Mu­sic, where the young mu­si­cian found both a thor­ough school­ing and his call­ing.

On his re­turn though, he taught like his moth­er had be­fore him and it would be four years be­fore he was spot­ted by Sam Ghany for the new­ly opened Hilton Ho­tel.

Roach would take up work there for the next three decades as the Hilton's mu­sic di­rec­tor, per­form­ing, ac­com­pa­ny­ing vis­it­ing guest mu­si­cians and com­mis­sion­ing big-band per­for­mances from Roy Cape and Er­rol Ince when vis­it­ing singers need­ed them.

He had the first mu­si­cal per­for­mance slot on TTT with Mu­sic 550, and got his nick­name, "Sug­ar Fin­gers," from Hazel Ward.

In 2004, he was award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Gold medal, the ho­n­our in­spir­ing him to turn his at­ten­tion to char­i­ta­ble works.

He works now with the Church of the In­car­na­tion in Mal­oney and the choir at St Jude's in Ari­ma, and he par­tic­u­lar­ly en­joys work­ing with the chil­dren at those church­es.

But his home base re­mains the Trinidad Chris­t­ian Cen­tre in Pe­tit Val­ley.

The man who once en­ter­tained din­ers in the dark clutch­ing drinks now per­forms twice week­ly in a hall to hun­dreds of the faith­ful, their hands raised in joy, voic­es led by his pow­er­ful chords.

"Wher­ev­er I'm need­ed, that's where I'll be," he says, re­clin­ing hap­pi­ly in a chair at the cen­tre's vast au­di­to­ri­um. "It's all God's work."

It's on­ly re­cent­ly that Fe­lix Roach be­gan to record his work. Ten years ago he did a record­ing with Sanch Elec­tron­ics called Im­pro­vis­ing the Clas­sics.

Just over a year ago, he record­ed Wor­ship Him One, a doc­u­men­ta­tion of his gospel work and now he's work­ing on the se­quel, a still un­named disc that he's veer­ing to­ward call­ing Wor­ship Him Two.

On this al­bum, due out in a month, he will be per­form­ing with the syn­the­sised strings he's been work­ing with at the cen­tre.

Of this new di­rec­tion, he says "Our Lord is one of thun­der and light­ning. I don't want to ap­proach these works like a dol­ly house."

He paus­es a mo­ment and re­calls an ap­pre­cia­tive mem­ber of the cen­tre's con­gre­ga­tion com­pli­ment­ing him on the range of his play­ing af­ter ser­vice.

"I have 88 keys," he told her, "and I don't want any of them to get jeal­ous."