Derianne Dyett's exquisite touch on the double second pans, along with the sustained creativity of the Rudy Smith Quartet, were the standout attractions at the fifth annual Birdsong Scholarship Benefit Concert staged at Queen's Hall, St Ann's, last Wednesday night.
Dyett is a student at the Prince Claus Conservatoire in the Netherlands. He appeared with the Raf Robertson and Birdsong Small Ensemble, performing musical solos in the group's chosen selections to a very appreciative and seemingly musically knowledgeable audience.
Robertson, a tutor at the Birdsong Academy, is an exceptional composer and pianist who has orchestrated and performed classic calypsos of yesteryear in a fresh, new context, as demonstrated with the group's brilliant showcase of Kitchener's (Aldwyn Roberts) compositions Fever and Margie.
Speaking about the pan playing of Rudy Smith, Krister Malm, a musicologist from Sweden, commented: "Rudy Smith has married the most important Afro-Caribbean invention in the field of musical instruments, the steelpan, to the most important Afro-American musical tradition, jazz. More than that, he has developed a solo style of the steelpan which has not been heard before. His technique is dazzling. But it is not a question of empty virtuosity. Rudy Smith's playing is marked by the same astonishing inventiveness that has created the steelpan."
The Rudy Smith Quartet comprises Frankie McIntosh on piano, Zane Rudolfo on drums, Jonas Tauber on bass and Swedish-based Smith on double seconds. Appearing after the playbill's interval, they included, in one selection, cuatro player extraordinaire Robert Munro. The Quartet played a dynamic repertoire that included You Don't Know What Love Is and Turkish Delight. Of note was how Tauber treated the bass as a solo instrument, playing fast, melodic lines effortlessly.
The primary objective of the concert was to raise money for the Academy's scholarship fund. The Birdsong Foundation established the Scholarship Programme in 2009 to help fund students with the talent, discipline and desire to pursue tertiary education. Additionally in July 2011 the Scholarship Fund was launched as a response to the challenge many talented students have accessing quality tertiary level music education.
The Birdsong guest list also included local jazz vocalist Vaughnette Bigford, and Frankie McIntosh, the doyen of calypso arrangers. The duo teamed up to present charming renditions of Embraceable You, the George and Ira Gershwin song written in 1928 and Autumn Leaves, a 1945 French song by Hungarian-French composer Joseph Kosma and poet Jacques Pr�vert.
Rooted in the steelband movement, the Birdsong Academy reaches beyond the steelpan to include other instruments (wind, brass, guitar, bass, drum kit, other percussion instruments, and voice) as it prepares students to be well-rounded musicians with the skills and prerequisites to enjoy a lifetime of music.
So it was that Richard Quarless led the 15-member Birdsong Big Band through interpretations of the works of jazz pianist Count Basie and jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie to open the programme, and the Birdsong Voices, fronted by former scholarship winner Nyol Manswell, who attends Berklee College in the US, filled the Hall with uplifting music from their breezy repertoire, after the interval.
More than 600 young people have benefited from Birdsong's Music Literacy and Education Programme for children aged 12 to 18 years since its inception in 2004. All instruction is free and instruments are sourced by Birdsong. Every year students are expected to sit theory Associated Boards of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) and practical (ABRSM), Trinity Guildhall and UWI examinations, and perform in the Academy concerts and national competitions and music festivals.