It is a his­toric con­cert se­ries for the BP Mar­i­onettes Chorale, who in­tro­duce their new 50-strong Chil­dren's Choir and giveThe Armed Man (A Mass for Peace) its Caribbean pre­miere this week­end at Queen's Hall. Back in 1987, the Mar­i­onettes pro­duce­dA Gift to the Na­tion to com­mem­o­rate the 25thanniver­sary of Trinidad & To­ba­go's in­de­pen­dence. Now, 25 years lat­er as T&T cel­e­brates its gold­en ju­bilee, the Mar­i­onettes readyA Gift to the Na­tion II, which plays for two nights on­ly: Sat­ur­day 14th and Sun­day 15thJu­ly.

One of the high­lights of the se­ries is sure to be the de­but of the Mar­i­onettes' new Chil­dren's Choir. They join their Youth Chorale and se­nior choir coun­ter­parts af­ter rig­or­ous au­di­tions ear­li­er this year. Among their tal­ent­ed 50-odd mem­bers are Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, Ju­nior Panora­ma and Schools So­ca Monarch win­ners. Their tal­ent, en­er­gy and ex­u­ber­ance are sure to de­light au­di­ence mem­bers.

The Mar­i­onettes con­tin­ues to make his­to­ry with the Caribbean pre­miere of Karl Jenk­ins' new con­tem­po­rary clas­sic,The Armed Man (a Mass for Peace),join­ing more than 500 oth­er groups world­wide who have per­formed the pow­er­ful work. A de­lib­er­ate con­trast to last year's lav­ish pro­duc­tion of Bizet'sCar­men, it in­cor­po­rates mul­ti­cul­tur­al lit­er­ary, mu­si­cal and vi­su­al el­e­ments, in­clud­ing a vis­cer­al film de­vel­oped ex­clu­sive­ly for the work; the Is­lam­ic call to prayer; the Ma­hab­hara­ta; and text by Kipling, Ten­nyson, Dry­den, Swift, Guy Wil­son, and San­kichi Toge, a sur­vivor of the Hi­roshi­ma bomb­ing in World War II.

It has been­de­scribed by the UK'sLon­don Time­sas "a rap­tur­ous per­for­mance, by turns vis­cer­al and ethe­re­al...a fire­bomb of or­ches­tral and hu­man voic­es". Sung in Eng­lish, Latin, French and Ara­bic, and weav­ing to­geth­er Palest­ri­na-style Re­nais­sance polypho­ny, plain­chant, and me­dieval bal­lads, the work goes to the heart of what is uni­ver­sal about the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

This year al­so marks 40 years of part­ner­ship be­tween the Mar­i­onettes and pri­ma­ry spon­sors bpTT. "The Mar­i­onettes has be­come an in­sti­tu­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go by us­ing mu­sic as a force for pos­i­tive change. I al­ways look for­ward to their con­certs be­cause they re­in­force the idea that mu­sic can bring to­geth­er cul­tures and gen­er­a­tions. One of the more in­ter­est­ing points about the Mar­i­onettes is their fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing young artists who can car­ry on this tra­di­tion," ex­plained bpTT Pres­i­dent and CEO Norm Christie.

Join­ing bpTT in part­ner­ing with the Mar­i­onettes on this pro­duc­tion is a dec­o­rat­ed pro­duc­tion team in­clud­ing En­rique Ali, Jane Carter, Leslie Clement, Desmond Wait­he, Mar­garet Shep­pard, No­ble Dou­glas, Dave Williams, Randy Halfhide, Celi­aWells, and Franklin Agar­rat.

Tick­ets are reg­u­lar­ly priced at $200 (re­served) and $150 (open plan, with dis­counts for stu­dents and school chil­dren – see web­site for de­tails). Tick­ets are avail­able from the Mar­i­onettes(email@mar­i­onetteschorale.co­mor 868-790-1751),and at the Queen's Hall Box Of­fice (tel: 868-624-1284), 12–6pm. Show­times at Queen's Hall are 7:30pm on Sat­ur­day 14thand 5pm on Sun­day 15thJu­ly.

Giv­en the na­ture of the work, pa­trons are al­so ad­vised that there will on­ly one pause in The Armed Man in the first half to ac­com­mo­date late­com­ers, with no fur­ther en­try per­mit­ted un­til in­ter­mis­sion. Au­di­ence mem­bers are there­fore en­cour­aged to ar­rive prompt­ly to avoid dis­ap­point­ment. Pa­trons are al­so ad­vised that the film ac­com­pa­ny­ing The Armed Man, de­vel­oped ex­clu­sive­ly for the work, con­tains some graph­ic im­ages of war that some may find dis­turb­ing.

Pro­ceeds fro­mA Gift to the Na­tion IIgo to the Mar­i­onettes Prop­er­ty Fund, and the con­struc­tion of He­lios Hall, a se­cure re­hearsal, stor­age and per­for­mance space for the group that it hopes to share with the na­tion­al artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty.