Car­ni­val is com­ing to Un­der The Trees at The Nor­mandie in St Ann's from Jan­u­ary 31.

On that date the in­ti­mate, back­yard en­ter­tain­ment space opens its 2014 sea­son with Bac­cha­nal, the launch of pop­u­lar Rap­so group 3canal's an­nu­al pro­duc­tion, this year themed Car­ni­val Com­ing, at which pa­trons can ex­pect to be in­vit­ed to Take A Wine, ti­tle of one of the trio's mu­si­cal con­tri­bu­tions to this year's fes­tiv­i­ties.

Un­der The Trees has in­creased its ex­po­sure of the ca­lyp­so tent at the venue this year with a Ca­lyp­so Tent Week. In ad­di­tion to the Kaiso Kar­a­van, Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' Or­gan­i­sa­tion's (TU­CO) East Zone tent, that has a slot on the play­bill every year, al­so ap­pear­ing will be Kaiso House, TU­CO's flag­ship tent, and Klas­sic Ru­so, op­er­at­ed by the or­gan­i­sa­tion's North Zone.

In­stead of the tra­di­tion­al lengthy du­ra­tion of a ca­lyp­so tent, the shows are of two hours' du­ra­tion, and fea­ture se­lect­ed cast mem­bers, among which will be up-and-com­ing young ca­lyp­so tal­ent. Their sched­uled dates are: Feb­ru­ary 17–Kaiso House; Feb­ru­ary 18–Klas­sic Ru­so and Feb­ru­ary 19–Kaiso Kar­a­van.

Once asked why ca­lyp­so tents were a fea­ture of Un­der The Trees pro­gram­ming, own­er/man­ag­er of The Nor­mandie Fred Chin Lee said he al­ways want­ed to high­light the sig­nif­i­cance of the ca­lyp­so tent and its rel­e­vance to T&T Car­ni­val.

"What re­al­ly is a ca­lyp­so tent?" he ques­tioned. "Are they the re­flec­tions of so­ci­etal be­hav­iour now, as in the be­gin­ning? Do they cre­ate the space to free up of the bur­dens, chal­lenges and toils of the year just gone by? Do they rep­re­sent the he­lix of T&T's cul­tur­al DNA? The an­swers to these ques­tions will vary with each in­di­vid­ual. Our pur­pose Un­der The Trees, there­fore, is to pro­vide the op­por­tu­ni­ty for pa­trons to sat­is­fy what­ev­er is their de­sire."

Oth­er high­lights on this year's pro­gramme sched­ule in­clude: Danc­ing Un­der The Trees on Valen­tine's Day, Feb­ru­ary 14, fea­tur­ing Baron (Tim­o­thy Watkins); The Min­istry of The Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism's Trinidad In­ter­ac­tive Mu­sic Ex­po (TIME) Con­cert on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 27, fea­tur­ing Ca­lyp­so Rose (Mc­Cartha Lewis), Mun­gal Patasar, Machel Mon­tano, Bun­ji Gar­lin (Ian Al­varez), and Faye Ann Lyons-Al­varez; Mi­ni Veni all-in­clu­sive par­ty on Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 9; and Hearts on Fire all-in­clu­sive fete on Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 23.

Pa­trons will al­so ex­pe­ri­ence oth­er per­for­mances in ca­lyp­so and steel­band mu­sic by some of the top prac­ti­tion­ers of the arts, in­clud­ing David Rud­der, Black Stal­in, Su­perBlue, Karene As­che, and David Bereaux. The house band is Pel­ham God­dard and Roots, and show time is 8.30 pm.

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