DE­BRA RAV­EL­LO GREAVES

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Orville Lon­don is pleased with the re­sponse to this year's To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence and the pre-event build-up to the ma­jor pro­duc­tions at Pi­geon Point last week­end. Lon­don said he be­lieved he had ac­com­plished the tar­get of mak­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence a suc­cess. "Def­i­nite­ly, this year has been the most vis­i­ble in terms of suc­cess," Lon­don said in an in­ter­view at the Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park. The To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence 2011 was spread across sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing Spey­side, Sig­nal Hill, Mt Irvine, Scar­bor­ough and oth­er lo­ca­tions.

Lon­don said that for­mat would be main­tained and that ac­tiv­i­ties would no longer be cen­tral to any one com­mu­ni­ty as they were at Ply­mouth, where the Ply­mouth Jazz fes­ti­val was held for four years con­sec­u­tive­ly. He said the rea­son for dis­trib­ut­ing the events across com­mu­ni­ties was to gen­er­ate both so­cial and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, a mis­sion which he thinks has been ac­com­plished. "I have achieved the ob­jec­tive of tak­ing the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence to dif­fer­ent venues and us­ing cul­ture to gen­er­ate so­cial and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty," Lon­don said.

He said he al­so felt the Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence 2011 was in­stru­men­tal in boost­ing in­ter-is­land tourism and he not­ed that the ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple in the au­di­ence at Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park on Thurs­day were Trinida­di­ans. Thurs­day's "World Mu­sic Night," which fea­tured in­ter­na­tion­al artiste Trey Songz, at­tract­ed the biggest crowd to Her­itage Park. Lon­don said the chal­lenge he now faced was how to sat­is­fy the de­mand from those com­mu­ni­ties who al­so want­ed the jazz ex­pe­ri­ence to boost their pro­file and eco­nom­ic growth. Lon­don said a re­view would be done be­fore any plans were made and venues se­lect­ed for next year's fes­ti­val.