Si­mon Lee

The Mec­ca for any as­pir­ing or ex­pe­ri­enced mu­si­cian is Carnegie Hall, New York, one of the world's pre­mier con­cert halls. Once you've hit Carnegie, you've reached the heights.So imag­ine the thrill for lo­cal sax, flute and wood­wind play­er Tony Paul (aka Tony Woodroffe), now reg­is­ter­ing his pres­ence as a per­former, at be­ing se­lect­ed as a par­tic­i­pant in an in­ten­sive five-day work­shop run by Cuban sax mae­stro Paquito D'Rivera at Carnegie Hall, from May 12�16.Orig­i­nal­ly alert­ed to the work­shop (which aims to de­vel­op the skills of emerg­ing young artistes in­ter­est­ed in Latin jazz) by Maria Nunes, Woodroffe joined oth­er world­wide ap­pli­cants in the fierce com­pe­ti­tion for a place, not dar­ing to think he might be suc­cess­ful."There's no way I'm go­ing to get it," he re­calls, "but I'll ap­ply." D'Rivera ob­vi­ous­ly thought oth­er­wise and next week Woodroffe wings out to the Big Ap­ple to take his right­ful place among the new set of Young Turks, who will be tak­ing Latin jazz on some gi­ant steps.

Those who have been fol­low­ing Woodroffe's ca­reer will not be en­tire­ly sur­prised at his win­ning a place.Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of fel­low Fa­ti­ma Col­lege alum­nus, jazz trum­peter Eti­enne Charles, he has al­ready reached dis­cern­ing ears and au­di­ences far be­yond the shores of Trinidad. Most re­cent­ly Woodroffe made his first ap­pear­ance as a so­lo artiste at the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence.It's nev­er been easy for jazz mu­sic or jazz mu­si­cians in Trinidad, or in­deed the Caribbean, where de­spite a long tra­di­tion of Cre­ole jazz (reach­ing as far back as the 1880s when ex­per­i­ments with the be­guine in Mar­tinique matched Scott Joplin's syn­co­pa­tions in New Or­leans) pop­u­lar mu­si­cal taste is shaped ei­ther by Car­ni­val gen­res, roots and dance mu­sic or transna­tion­al fash­ions.

Woodroffe's in­ter­est was ini­tial­ly sparked by his mu­si­cian fa­ther's friend kaiso-jazz pi­o­neer Clive Zan­da, and his teacher at Fa­ti­ma, com­pos­er/arranger and pan vir­tu­oso Ray Hol­man.

Af­ter A-lev­els, he played with Ernesto Gar­cia's Latin Jazz band and Joel Perez's Fuego Lati­no. He cut his per­form­ing teeth at such venues as the Coun­try Club, Squeeze Bar and the inim­itable Arthur's in St James.It was a Squeeze Bar gig that first brought both him and Eti­enne Charles to the at­ten­tion of Chan­tal Es­delle, our lo­cal young jazz di­va and founder of the band �lan parl� (which has al­ready dis­tin­guished it­self by ap­pear­ing at the Ha­vana Jazz fes­ti­val).With lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­vel­op at home, Woodroffe shipped out to the UK, where he stud­ied at the pres­ti­gious Leeds Col­lege of Mu­sic 2006�9, earn­ing a BA (Hons) in jazz stud­ies.At Leeds, he had the op­por­tu­ni­ty of play­ing with leg­endary Cuban vi­o­lin­ist Omar Puente, while ex­tend­ing his in­stru­men­tal ex­per­tise, so he's now pro­fi­cient not on­ly on sax and flute but al­so on clar­inet and bas­soon. At col­lege, he played flute in the Latin Big Band and was lead al­to sax in the Con­tem­po­rary Big Band. With col­lege friends he al­so formed a tra­di­tion­al Cuban quin­tet, which gigged at the Leeds Vi­va Cu­ba venue.

One of the high­lights of play­ing with the Con­tem­po­rary Big Band was a con­cert per­form­ing com­pos­er/trum­peter Ken­ny Wheel­er's Sweet Time Suite: "It was so sur­re­al...the mu­sic was gor­geous and we were play­ing it with the writer of the mu­sic...The un­der­ly­ing thought in my mind was I want­ed to play my part as per­fect­ly as I could man­age be­cause it was such an ho­n­our to be part of that per­for­mance."Af­ter grad­u­at­ing, Woodroffe re­turned home where he's been pass­ing on his ex­per­tise and pas­sion for ex­cel­lence to UTT per­form­ing arts stu­dents in his ca­pac­i­ty as se­nior in­struc­tor of wood­winds.

While he's now made his mark on the lo­cal jazz scene (with per­for­mances at To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence and Jazz on the Beach at Mt Irvine), the call to Carnegie Hall could not be more for­tu­itous in terms of his per­son­al de­vel­op­ment."Since com­plet­ing my time at Leeds I haven't had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play in a ded­i­cat­ed Latin group that on­ly plays Latin stan­dards." Head­lin­ing in To­ba­go re­cent­ly was grat­i­fy­ing but he's more ex­cit­ed at the prospect of his Big Ap­ple time: "I've been look­ing for­ward to this more. I miss be­ing in an en­vi­ron­ment where every­one is on top of their game, it re­al­ly helps."Al­though he has some trep­i­da­tion ("I'm gonna get my a-- kicked") he's more than will­ing to give it his best blow, as be­sides the su­perb op­por­tu­ni­ty for per­son­al de­vel­op­ment "Any­thing I learn there I can use at UTT."