DAVID CUFFY

Two steel­pan vir­tu­osos of con­trast­ing styles de­liv­ered en­rich­ing mu­sic with a re­mark­able sense of har­mo­ny and rhythm, that yet again demon­strat­ed the mu­si­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties of the in­stru­ment, to an al­most full house of ap­pre­cia­tive pa­trons at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um, on Sat­ur­day night.

Oc­ca­sion was the QRC Foun­da­tion's Steel­pan and Jazz Fes­ti­val con­cert fea­tur­ing the "'Mozart of pan" Len "Boogsie" Sharpe and the "smoothest pan play­er" Robert Greenidge. The event, in recog­ni­tion of the na­tion's 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, was sup­port­ed in part by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment and Pan Trin­ba­go.

The play­bill's first half show­cased Boogsie.

Ac­com­pa­nied by five play­ers from his Phase II Pan Groove Steel Or­ches­tra, sup­ple­ment­ed by Chantelle Es­delle on key­board, Clif­ford Charles on gui­tar, Dou­glas Re­don on bass and Tam­ba Gwinde on per­cus­sion, the pan mae­stro opened with an in­tri­cate ver­sion of Moon­riv­er to be­gin a one-hour mu­si­cal jour­ney in which his ag­gres­sive play­ing style and tremen­dous skill seemed to take his cher­ished dou­ble sec­ond pans to places they had nev­er been be­fore.

In­deed, af­ter a fren­zied in­ter­pre­ta­tion of David Rud­der's The Ham­mer, he had to take a mo­ment to catch his breath be­fore jok­ing­ly telling lis­ten­ers: "I'm get­ting too old for this." When the ag­gre­ga­tion per­formed its take on the late An­dre Tanker's For­ward Home, Boogsie took op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate, to those who may have been un­aware, his con­sid­er­able skill on the key­board, as well.

His so­lo play­ing of the late Kitch­en­er's Pan Night & Day, pre­miered at the 1993 Car­ni­val Sun­day night Di­manche Gras show, was skill­ful and imag­i­na­tive, giv­ing a true in­di­ca­tion of his prowess be­hind a set of steel pans. Oth­er choic­es in his reper­toire in­clud­ed the Mighty Spar­row's Rose, God Bless Our Na­tion from the pen of Mar­jorie Pad­more, and the jazz stan­dard Green Dol­phin Street com­posed by Bro­nis­lau Kaper in 1947.

Af­ter the in­ter­val, it was Greenidge's turn to en­ter­tain. He took the stage with his ag­gre­ga­tion of for­eign-based mu­si­cians, in­clu­sive of a sax­o­phon­ist, key­boardist, bassist, drum­mer and per­cus­sion­ist, to de­liv­er songs from his de­cep­tive­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed CD al­bum ti­tled From The Heart.

The al­bum, in ad­di­tion to dis­play­ing his deft skills as one of the world's most gift­ed pan­nists, equal­ly show­cas­es his im­pres­sive tal­ents as a writer of songs for the pan. Open­ing with the ti­tle track, he of­fered oth­er cuts that in­clud­ed Kiss Kiss Kiss, Dark Horse, If I Nev­er See You Again, and Par­adise Gar­den. His play­ing was soft, clean, alive, and un­pre­ten­tious, but made se­ri­ous melod­ic state­ments.

His stir­ring so­lo in­ter­pre­ta­tions of Hoagy Carmichael's Star­dust and Er­rol Gar­ner's Misty high­light­ed his lev­el of artistry, and his abil­i­ty to "ca­ress" notes as no oth­er pan in­stru­men­tal­ist can. When for the fi­nale Greenidge of­fered Mu­si­cal Vol­cano, his com­po­si­tion and arrange­ment that won Wit­co Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra the Panora­ma ti­tle in 1991, one felt it an ap­pro­pri­ate ex­pres­sion for an evening bristling with ex­cite­ment and el­e­gance.