Wes­ley Gib­bings

It might not have been on the of­fi­cial pro­gramme of Eman­ci­pa­tion Day ac­tiv­i­ties, but the youth­ful T&T Steel and Brass Sym­phon­ic Or­ches­tra's (TTS­B­SO) mu­si­cal trib­ute to five in­ter­na­tion­al, na­tion­al and com­mu­ni­ty icons on Ju­ly 27 pro­vid­ed a per­fect launch pad for re­flec­tion on eman­ci­pa­tion ob­ser­vances.

Staged at Daa­ga Hall on the UWI cam­pus in St Au­gus­tine, A Mu­si­cal Trib­ute was ar­guably the best pub­lic pro­duc­tion of this group of young steel and brass mu­si­cians of re­cent years, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the hus­band-and-wife team of Leslie and Ju­dith Clement who found­ed TTS­B­SO in 2008.

Ho­n­oured at the event were the late South African pres­i­dent, Nel­son Man­dela and T&T prime min­is­ter and pres­i­dent, ANR Robin­son. For­mer school prin­ci­pals Jen­nifer Cox-Williams of Bon Air Sec­ondary and Kath­leen Kalloo of Five Rivers Sec­ondary were al­so on the list of hon­orees to­geth­er with Dale Ma­haraj, al­so of Five Rivers Sec­ondary School.

Not un­like the per­for­mances of pre­vi­ous years, the "ju­nior band," com­pris­ing grad­u­ates of the or­ches­tra's an­nu­al hol­i­day mu­sic camp, amazed a packed hall with in­spired in­ter­pre­ta­tions of Bacharach favourites such as Say a Lit­tle Prayer and Close to You and a high­ly en­ter­tain­ing ren­di­tion of Michael Jack­son's Thriller, com­plete with a be-gloved "moon­walk­er."

Hope­ful­ly, video­g­ra­phers en­gaged to record the con­cert got the se­nior band's en­tire mem­o­rable ren­di­tion of Jorge Ben Jor's Mas Que Na­da–a guar­an­teed ear­worm con­duct­ed by Stephen Vil­lafana.

Young trum­peter Ran­dell Adams tried his best dur­ing his so­lo on Bacharach's Say a Lit­tle Prayer and per­haps, on­ly then, re­alised the del­i­cate treat­ment re­quired to faith­ful­ly car­ry one of the Amer­i­can com­pos­er's more chal­leng­ing melodies. Adams is some­one to keep an eye on for the fu­ture.

Yet again, TTS­B­SO scored high marks for song se­lec­tion. Robert W Smith's Africa Cer­e­mo­ny, Song and Rit­u­al was ren­dered with a high lev­el of skill and sen­si­tiv­i­ty by the se­nior band and fea­tured the or­ches­tra's re­cent­ly es­tab­lished dance troupe–who all had to down their in­stru­ments for the per­for­mance.

There was even a vo­cal per­for­mance, by the young­sters of the ju­nior band, of The Li­on Sleeps Tonight arranged by pro­lif­ic choir mas­ter John Bap­tiste.

The TTS­B­SO has emerged as a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion in the coun­try with hun­dreds of young mu­si­cians from east Trinidad com­mu­ni­ties ben­e­fit­ing from first class in­struc­tion of­fered by the Clements and Vil­lafana and, this year, young mu­si­cians from the se­nior band who al­so served as tu­tors at the mu­sic camp.

Ju­dith Clement and Mar­ti­na Chow al­so of­fered their ser­vices as "life skills" coach­es while Kelvin Pierre and Ma­halia May­ers op­er­at­ed as camp man­agers.

A high num­ber of the or­ches­tra se­niors are cur­rent­ly in mu­sic de­gree pro­grammes at UWI and else­where and sev­er­al have gone on to high­er ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties at uni­ver­si­ties abroad.

The lack of co­he­sive cor­po­rate sup­port for the or­ches­tra, whose mem­bers come from what Leslie Clement has de­scribed as "fi­nan­cial­ly chal­lenged" ar­eas of the coun­try, was not­ed by the mas­ter of cer­e­monies more than once.

In fact, there is even a chal­lenge with ac­cess­ing suf­fi­cient in­stru­ments for play­ers and a call was made for peo­ple with wind in­stru­ments stored, un­used any­where to be do­nat­ed to the or­ches­tra.

More than one mem­ber of the au­di­ence re­tort­ed that the rel­a­tive pover­ty of TTS­B­SO was in­ex­plic­a­ble in the midst of an eco­nom­ic boom and ev­i­dence of con­sid­er­able of­fi­cial, fi­nan­cial waste.

Among this year's ma­jor bene­fac­tors were the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Si­mon's Mu­sic Sup­plies, Na­tion­al Flour Mills and more than a dozen cred­it unions. "Not a sin­gle bank," the MC said.

A Mu­si­cal Trib­ute was cer­tain­ly worth more than the $100 ad­mis­sion. Much, much more. It was a mag­i­cal mu­si­cal trib­ute to un­doubt­ed he­roes.

The TTS­B­SO chair­man is Kelvin Pierre and he can be con­tact­ed at 704-2616.