Pres­i­dent of the Jazz Al­liance of Trinidad and To­ba­go (JATT), Sean Thomas, has been in­vit­ed to play T&T's na­tion­al mu­si­cal in­stru­ment, the steel­pan, at one of the most pres­ti­gious jazz events in the world. It will be the first time pans are used in the cer­e­mo­ny of its kind. The Th­elo­nious Monk In­ter­na­tion­al Jazz Pi­ano Com­pe­ti­tion and 25th an­niver­sary gala con­cert is sched­uled to take place on Sep­tem­ber 12 at The John F Kennedy Cen­ter for the Per­form­ing Arts, Wash­ing­ton, DC. The event will be host­ed by Her­bie Han­cock, Phyli­cia Rashad, and Bil­ly Dee Williams, and the cer­e­mo­ny will ho­n­our Aretha Franklin with the in­sti­tute's 2011 Maria Fish­er Founder's Award.

The line-up of per­form­ers on the night is a ver­i­ta­ble who's who of the great­est liv­ing jazz artistes. They in­clude: El­lis Marsalis; TS Monk Jr; Di­anne Reeves; Mar­cus Roberts; Wayne Short­er; Ron Carter; Jim­my Heath; Ter­ence Blan­chard; Dee Dee Bridge­wa­ter; Ter­ri Lyne Car­ring­ton; John Pat­i­tuc­ci; Joey De­Francesco; Am­brose Ak­in­musire; John Beasley; ELEW; Kurt Elling; Kevin Eu­banks; Rober­ta Gam­bari­ni; Li­onel Loueke; Joe Lo­vano; Chris­t­ian McBride; Ja­son Moran; Gretchen Par­la­to; Dani­lo Perez; Ben Williams; all past com­pe­ti­tion win­ners, and many more. Thomas will be amongst il­lus­tri­ous com­pa­ny.

Al­though he has been known most­ly as a drum­mer for the last 14 years af­ter grad­u­at­ing from the in­sti­tute and re­turn­ing to T&T in 1998, some would re­mem­ber his years as a pan soloist, teacher and arranger. He has been man­ag­er of the Moods Steel Or­ches­tra since the death of his fa­ther, pan tuner Leroy Thomas, and he has al­so been a judge in nu­mer­ous steel pan com­pe­ti­tions. Thomas re­turned to Trinidad in 1998 ea­ger to turn lo­cal mu­si­cians and Trin­bag­o­ni­ans on to jazz mu­sic. In that mis­sion, to­geth­er with his wife Patrice and friends, he cre­at­ed ST Jazz In­cor­po­rat­ed Ltd and Pro­duc­tion One Ltd and then went on to cre­ate The Jazz Al­liance of T&T. He launched ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grams such as The Jazz Artists Work­shop, Sum­mer Holis­tic Jazz Work­shop, Jazz Movie Sun­days and Rhythm Sto­ries pre­sent­ed to pre school chil­dren.

Hun­dreds of mu­si­cians prof­it­ed from and grad­u­at­ed from his work­shops. He al­so launched events such as Jazz on the Av­enue, In The Realm of Mas­ters, Jazz Artists On The Greens, Jazz at Cor­ner Bar, Jazz at Au­ra, In­ti­mate Ses­sions at Drink Wine Bar, Brazil­ian Jazz at Satch­mo's, Jaz­zolyp­so, The Trinidad & To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val, in­tro­duc­ing Chut­ney Jazz, Jaz­zup The Run­way and Jaz­zang. Thomas is cur­rent­ly in New York, re­con­nect­ing with the jazz com­mu­ni­ty there as he pre­pares for his big per­for­mance where he promis­es he will launch a new con­cept and ap­proach to pan play­ing. He is al­so hop­ing that JATT can es­tab­lish firmer re­la­tion­ships with or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Min­istry of Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, as well as with the lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor, based on what his or­gan­i­sa­tion has done thus far for the arts, the com­mu­ni­ty and lo­cal mu­si­cians.

"Our chil­dren es­pe­cial­ly, are hard­ly ex­posed to beau­ti­ful mu­sic staged at our parks, be it clas­si­cal, jazz, latin, ca­lyp­so etc, in or­der to ex­pe­ri­ence what live per­for­mances re­al­ly means. "They need to be hear­ing mu­sic played at the high­est de­grees of skill and vir­tu­os­i­ty. I be­lieve this is crit­i­cal for any so­ci­ety and would def­i­nite­ly pro­duce a soft­er side to com­mu­ni­cat­ing with each oth­er as they progress. "Most im­por­tant­ly, we need to find ways to en­cour­age lo­cal mu­si­cians young and old to play our mu­sic more with each oth­er -not nec­es­sar­i­ly with elec­tron­ics-but with acoustic in­stru­ments, as this presents the op­por­tu­ni­ty for di­a­logue be­tween our­selves so we can learn more about each oth­er and how we feel as a peo­ple," he said.