Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Pan Trin­ba­go is sat­is­fied with the re­sponse they have re­ceived so far for their ear­ly kick-off to their Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

The com­pe­ti­tion, which usu­al­ly takes place around Car­ni­val, be­gan their pre­lim­i­nary round for its sin­gle pan leg last week— an un­prece­dent­ed move.

Trea­sur­er of Pan trin­ba­go Ger­ard Mendez told Guardian Me­dia they re­ceived many pos­i­tive re­views.

He said, “We have had a very pos­i­tive re­sponse. The turnout at the dif­fer­ent pan yards in the pre­lim­i­nary rounds has been very favourable and al­ready we have al­ready seen an im­prove­ment in the qual­i­ty of the com­pe­ti­tion.”

He be­lieved the im­prove­ment could be at­trib­uted to their de­ci­sion to change the struc­ture of the com­pe­ti­tion which, he said, now al­lows play­ers to breathe.

“One of the rea­sons for the bet­ter qual­i­ty is that now where play­ers were shar­ing their time be­tween dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories to pre­pare for the dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of Panora­ma, we find that be­cause we have moved it to No­vem­ber the play­ers have more time to de­vote to the bands they play for. Be­cause of that, you get­ting a bet­ter qual­i­ty and this is just the be­gin­ning.”

46 bands took part in the pre­lim­i­nar­ies, how­ev­er, on­ly 31 would move on to the se­mi-fi­nals on Sun­day in Ari­ma. Of these, on­ly 20 would move on to the fi­nals on No­vem­ber 23 at the Grand Stand of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Scor­ing the high­est dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary round San Juan East Side Sym­pho­ny amass­ing 268 points with their ren­di­tion of “Gui­tar Pan”.