The throbbing sound system of a passing car midway in the programme would have reminded a substantial Daaga Hall audience of the season. Two Fridays before the Carnival heat and the air conditioning seemed itself to have been pumped up more than a meagre notch as The Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra (FCCO) of China took the stage.
The Master of Ceremonies, an impressively multi-lingual Meghan Ghent of the Confucius Institute who did the interpretations, sat cross legged behind the podium as if nothing had happened. But on stage was one of China's premier traveling musical troupes playing music University of the West Indies (UWI) music professor, Satanand Sharma, hoped would inspire some of his students who, for that moment, downed more familiar instruments and musical scores.
The campus's musical programme actually includes a "world music" component which introduces students to some of the instruments on stage that evening and Sharma welcomed the attendance of many of his young charges.
By the time the FCCO opened with its rendition of a piece which brought on stage a variety of traditional instruments including the 21-string guzheng, the pipa and the guitar-like four-stringed ruan, there was little doubt that the troupe's much vaunted musical excellence would be on show that evening
Later on, the strings of the guzheng, pipa and ruan would be joined by players on the traditional Chinese "dizi" flute and pipe-organ like "sheng" wind instrument.
Knowledgeable wags would remark that the Chinese pentatonic scale is not entirely unfamiliar to most locals and the FCCO's forays into what programme organisers described as "the distinctive individualism of modern day musicians" made for an intimacy not unlike a Boogsie solo rising above a stage full of guitars and keyboards and wind instruments.
Gracefully executed pipa and ruan solos exemplified the troupe's fame as a group whose repertoire is capable of "shortening the emotional distance between elegant music and ordinary people."
The programme was co-ordinated by UWI's Department of Creative and Festival Arts, headed by Sharma, in collaboration with the Embassy of China, the Ministry of Arts and Multiculturalism and the Confucius Institute.
In a season of music, the FCCO visit was timely. At Naparima Bowl, the group had earlier appeared alongside the National Steel Symphony Orchestra.
The orchestra's role as part of the government of China's "Orient Express" has taken the troupe to Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Mexico, Cuba, Israel and Spain.