Ray Funk and Andrew Martin
On April 26, the Northern Illinois Steelband will once again hold its annual spring concert at the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall in DeKalb, Illinois. Led by co-directors Liam Teague and Cliff Alexis, Northern Illinois University Steelband will perform a concert featuring several new works and arrangements for steelband and, as always, the concert will be available to Trinidad and the world via live Web cast.
Highlights of the concert are to include two collaborations with the NIU Wind Ensemble conducted by Professor Ronnie Wooten. The first collaboration is a concerto for solo steelpan and wind ensemble titled Origins and Expansions by noted percussionist and composer Kevin Bobo and featuring Liam Teague as steelpan soloist.
The work was written for Teague and commissioned by the Metamora High School Wind Ensemble and its director Wally Parks whose daughter is a NIU steelband alumnus. Liam Teague has previously commissioned three other new pieces by Kevin Bobo, a steelpan solo and two duets for steelpan and marimba. These efforts are part of Teague's ongoing mission to work with a range of contemporary composers to create new music for steelpan in a variety of settings.
The other collaboration on the concert is a unique performance by the full NIU steelband and the NIU Wind Ensemble of Jupiter, one of the seven sections of the orchestral suite The Planets by British composer Gustav Holst. One of the perennial classics that first premiered almost a century ago, Jupiter was arranged for this performance by the newest graduate student in the NIU steelpan programme, Akua Leith.
Arriving in DeKalb last Fall, Leith is an outstanding pannist who won a Fulbright scholarship to attend NIU for his master's degree. Leith earned both a certificate and bachelor degree from UWI and recently served as a part time lecturer at UTT. He is also the Vice Principal of Performance at the Trinity All Generation School of the Arts (Tags).
In addition to his academic studies, Leith is an accomplished pannist and was a longtime member of the National Steel Symphony, toured internationally, played with a number of the major steelbands in Trinidad, and in the more recent past has arranged for Pandemonium and numerous other steelbands.
The NIU Steelband spring concert programme will also feature the NIU steelband performing two works by co-director Cliff Alexis, a classic calypso titled Plenty Pan, as well as a recent arrangement of the Latin ballad De La Vuelta made popular by singer Marc Anthony. This will be a new arrangement by Cliff Alexis who has made it his mission that the NIU Steelband stay up to date on the latest developments in music coming out of Trinidad.
The NIU Steelband will also perform one of the most popular 2015 Panorama tunes Outta De Box, by Mark Loquan and Seion Gomez with lyrics by GB. The tune was one of the most often played tunes for Panorama and was played by Harmonites, Tokyo, Valley Harps, La Horquetta Pan Groove, Pandemonium, Nutones, St Margaret's Superstars, and St Francois Girls. This was a first time collaboration between two Panorama veterans in Loquan and Gomez, and their geographic location notwithstanding–Loquan in Australia and Gomez in Trinidad–the Internet makes such unique collaborations now very easy.
Seion Gomez is a lecturer at UTT and leading young Panorama arranger who had already arranged several of Mark Loquan's tunes in the past before approaching him to work together from the beginning of the process. The tune for Outta De Box has a special affinity for the NIU Steelband as Gomez was once a Music Literacy Trust scholar and holds the distinction of being the first person to earn a graduate degree in Steelpan Performance from the NIU School of Music, the only place in the world that offers such a programme.
Khan Cordice, the leading young steelpan arranger from Antigua, who will graduate with a masters degree in steelpan performance at the end of the spring semester, will perform a unique cello pan solo version of Lord Kitchener's Rain-o-Rama arranged by Abe Breiling.
An NIU Steelband alumnus, Breiling and several current and former NIU Steelband students participated in this year's Panorama with Silver Stars this past Carnival. His career at NIU is soon over, Cordice is headed back to Antigua where this summer he will again be arranging for Hell's Gate Steelband where he has won Antigua's Panorama four times since 2009. In the near future, Cordice is also a featured soloist this year at the Inside Out Steelband Festival in Austin, Texas on April 21.
Liam Teague comes to the spring concert in the midst of an already busy year that includes arranging for Silver Stars for Panorama in Trinidad where they tied for third place and artist residencies and performances with steelbands from Alaska to Texas and Missouri. In late May, Teague will embark on a monumental event when he performs the premier of a new concerto for steelpan and orchestra by celebrated young composer Andy Akiyo. This new concerto will be premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC on May 29 and 30 with the National Symphony.
Teague's summer plans are in flux but they will include his work as the steelband director at the Birch Creek summer music programme, several performances, and he will be arranging for Silver Stars for the August International Conference and Panorama steelband competition in Port-of-Spain, scheduled for August 9. Also, his composition Bella Vista, performed by the NIU Steelband at the spring concert, will be the featured piece by the International Virtual Steelband that Pastiche Pan Ensemble is creating as part of the conference (see virtualsteelband.com).
�2 Ray Funk is a retired Alaskan judge who is passionately devoted to calypso, pan and mas. Dr Andrew Martin is an ethnomusicologist, percussionist, pannist, and Professor of Music at Inver Hills College in
St Paul, Minnesota.
WEB CAST INFO
�2 To watch the NIU Steelband spring concert Web cast on April 26, go to http://www.niu.edu/Music/media/webcasts/index.shtml
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�2 The concert will begin at 3 pm Chicago time, which is 4 pm in Trinidad.