Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

“The mo­ment be­tween ‘and the Gram­my goes to’ and hear­ing the name of your team is lit­er­al­ly breath­tak­ing. My heart skipped two beats, at least. And then when I heard ‘In­tel­li­gence’, there was this rush of adren­a­line. The first feel­ing is dis­be­lief and then in­cred­i­ble ex­cite­ment, ela­tion,” re­called 56-year-old Trinida­di­an-Cana­di­an mu­sic con­duc­tor Kwamé Ryan.

That mo­ment was an un­for­get­table one not on­ly for Ryan, but al­so one that went down in the his­to­ry books. Ryan be­came the first black man to win the ti­tle Best Opera Record­ing at the 2026 Gram­my Awards.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian, Ryan ex­plained:

“It’s his­toric in that sense that there hasn’t been a black con­duc­tor to have won the Best Opera Record­ing cat­e­go­ry ever at the Gram­mys. It’s al­so a first for my or­ches­tra, the Char­lotte Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra, be­cause they’ve nev­er had a mu­sic di­rec­tor win a Gram­my. So in both those ways, it’s his­toric.”

Ryan, the son of the late po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Sel­wyn Ryan and teacher and ac­tress Joya Gomez, left Trinidad at the ear­ly age of 14 and trav­elled to Eng­land to pur­sue his mu­si­cal stud­ies.

He con­tin­ued study­ing and work­ing with or­ches­tras across Eu­rope and be­yond.

In 2013, Ryan re­turned to T&T and be­gan work­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts as the di­rec­tor, help­ing to de­vel­op young tal­ent.

He has re­ceived sev­er­al awards, in­clud­ing the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awardees for Ex­cel­lence 2017 in the cat­e­go­ry of Arts and Let­ters.

Ryan now serves as the Mu­sic Di­rec­tor at the Char­lotte Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra in North Car­oli­na.

In 2023, he worked on Jake Heg­gie’s In­tel­li­gence with the Hous­ton Grand Opera Or­ches­tra. The record­ing from that pro­duc­tion was lat­er re­leased in Au­gust 2025 and sub­se­quent­ly won the Gram­my at the 68th An­nu­al Gram­my Awards in Feb­ru­ary 2026.

In­tel­li­gence is a Civ­il War thriller, based on a true sto­ry. It fol­lows the tale of abo­li­tion­ist Eliz­a­beth Van Lew and her se­cret spy ring, which was led by for­mer­ly en­slaved Mary Jane Bows­er, who in­fil­trat­ed the Con­fed­er­ate White House and helped al­ter the course of his­to­ry.

“It’s not an opera that feels elit­ist. It’s a sto­ry that every­body can un­der­stand, and every­body can be moved by. I think be­cause it deals with is­sues that are still rel­e­vant to­day, you know, about the di­vi­sion of this coun­try (USA), about the lega­cy of slav­ery in this coun­try, and al­so the role of women in mov­ing so­ci­ety for­ward, and women who, in many ways, re­mained in­vis­i­ble in the work that they were do­ing,” ob­served Ryan.

Re­flect­ing on the sig­nif­i­cance of the In­tel­li­gence’s win, Ryan ad­mit­ted the mo­ment was both hum­bling and grat­i­fy­ing.

“At the same mo­ment we’re en­joy­ing af­fir­ma­tion, we may al­so be suf­fer­ing from a lit­tle bit of im­poster syn­drome, you know. Be­cause, in my cat­e­go­ry, there were five in­cred­i­ble nom­i­nees, all of whom were very de­serv­ing. And then, even know­ing how hard you’ve worked, and even know­ing that you did a great job, you, on some lev­el, ques­tion why me? But that pass­es quite quick­ly, be­cause I do think that this project was de­serv­ing of this recog­ni­tion. It was a very spe­cial project, and the Record­ing Acad­e­my recog­nised that,” he re­flect­ed.

Ryan em­pha­sised that while his name was en­graved on the award, many oth­ers de­served cred­it for its suc­cess.

“In every sense, it takes a vil­lage for an in­di­vid­ual to make it to the high lev­el. In fact, my sis­ter was rem­i­nisc­ing last week­end about dri­ving me to mu­sic lessons on the week­end and wait­ing for me to take me back home. This was six years apart. So, when I was in sin­gle dig­its, my sis­ter was a teenag­er and had bet­ter things to do than drop her broth­er off to mu­sic lessons and pick him up again. But she did it,” he re­count­ed.

He said his moth­er was a strong source of sup­port and in­spi­ra­tion for him.

“Since I was sev­en, since I said I want­ed to do this, my moth­er has sup­port­ed me for decades. She was a teacher, and she even took an ex­change pro­gramme to come and teach in Eng­land when I was at board­ing school, so she could be clos­er to me, to sup­port me,” he added.

Al­though Ryan ad­mit­ted that his fa­ther, Sel­wyn Ryan, was ini­tial­ly more guard­ed con­cern­ing his ca­reer choice, over time, he be­came sup­port­ive.

“He was a po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist and an au­thor, so in an aca­d­e­m­ic sense, he could un­der­stand it, but not the way that my mom could, be­cause my mom was a per­former her­self, and I grew up in the the­atre watch­ing my mom re­hearse. Ini­tial­ly, my dad was pret­ty scep­ti­cal when I told him I want­ed to be a con­duc­tor. His re­ac­tion was, ‘And how will you eat?’ Well, he came around over time as I demon­strat­ed how I would eat and that I would eat quite well. How­ev­er, I think he would re­al­ly have en­joyed see­ing me up there on the world stage. I think that would have been a thrill for him,” Ryan said.

Re­gard­ing his next move, the Gram­my win­ner sim­ply said:

“Some­body told me, ‘You have a Gram­my now, that’s a moun­tain that you’ve climbed, what’s the next moun­tain to climb?’ And I told him, you know, I don’t feel like I’ve been climb­ing any­thing. I feel like I’ve been do­ing some­thing that I love, that I want­ed to do ever since I was a boy, and so noth­ing changes.”

This love and joy for mu­sic is some­thing Ryan hopes can be passed down to the younger gen­er­a­tion.

“The next gen­er­a­tion of ar­tis­ti­cal­ly in­clined young Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans can get that kind of in­spi­ra­tion, ei­ther from ob­serv­ing what I’ve done or go­ing to the Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts and be­ing among their tribe, you know, be­ing with­in their tribe from an ear­li­er age than I could be in Trinidad, I think that would be an in­cred­i­ble evo­lu­tion,” he said.