Ger­vase Warn­er, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Neal and Massy Group (N&M), has paid the mem­bers of reign­ing na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on N&M Trinidad All Stars a glow­ing com­pli­ment. He said the ex­ec­u­tives of the con­glo­morate he leads can learn from the band's unique ap­proach to team­work. In a spir­it­ed ad­dress to pan­nists at the band's vic­to­ry par­ty host­ed at the Bel­mont Sa­lon of the Hilton Trinidad, on May 20, Warn­er hailed Trinidad All Stars as a unique in­sti­tu­tion which the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty should pay close at­ten­tion to. "In our cor­po­rate en­vi­ron­ment, we are al­ways try­ing to get hun­dreds of peo­ple to work to­geth­er, to work as a whole, to look out for one an­oth­er and play their part in har­mo­ny and syn­chro­nous melody. The hard work, the ded­i­ca­tion, the drills and the en­joy­ment that you'll see to get out of it, it is like you were born to play pan. I think that there is some­thing fan­tas­tic about that, that we as a cor­po­ra­tion can take away from what you'll have done," Warn­er said.

"This year, when I came down to the pa­n­yard, the thing that struck me the most was a unique en­er­gy from the band. It was like a dif­fer­ent kind of to­geth­er­ness. It was like one force. I knew some­thing was up this year. You all could have felt it, too. I think that is a big part of what the Trinidad All Stars has al­ways been about. Quite frankly, it is what we at Neal and Massy are about," Warn­er said. Warn­er re­liv­ed his ex­pe­ri­ence on stage dur­ing Trinidad All Stars' per­for­mance for 2011 Panora­ma se­ries, pro­duced by Pan Trin­ba­go, which had pan­nists and N&M sec­tor heads alike in stitch­es.

Warn­er joked that a num­ber of CEOs from com­pa­nies that al­so spon­sored bands com­pet­ing for tops ho­n­ours in the con­ven­tion­al cat­e­go­ry-large-had plans to fol­low his lead and ap­pear in the spot­light with their bands, sug­gest­ing that such an ex­ec­u­tive pres­ence was worth a cou­ple more points. Warn­er did not miss the op­por­tu­ni­ty to salute Trinidad All Stars' man­age­ment un­der the guid­ance of its cap­tain and gen­er­al man­ag­er, Beres­ford Hunte, for it fore­sight. He said he had no doubt that the bless­ings be­stowed un­to Trinidad All Stars was un­der­pinned by its unswerv­ing com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing and main­tain­ing well-knit com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions in east Port-of-Spain. "The op­por­tu­ni­ties you pro­vide for youth in that cap­tion area, to come in and be part of some­thing that is suc­cess­ful...to be part of a team that wins, is re­al­ly tremen­dous. N&M Trinidad All Stars, you are a force for good," Warn­er de­clared.