Ajnish Mo­hip, son of clas­si­cal chut­ney duo Rana and Su­san Mo­hip, felt in­spired to cre­ate a fo­rum for young mu­si­cians and formed the Hum­ming­bird Mu­sic Pro­duc­tion in part­ner­ship with his school­mate Tim­o­thy Bal­ly.

To­geth­er, the young men staged Bring Back the Old Time Days at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my foe the Per­form­ing Arts (South­ern Cam­pus), San Fer­nan­do, on Sep­tem­ber 1.

No doubt draw­ing in­spi­ra­tion from his par­ents’ ag­gre­ga­tion (Sargam In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ches­tra), mu­sic brought the two young men to­geth­er when they met while at­tend­ing Na­pari­ma Col­lege. Mo­hip is cur­rent­ly a Low­er Sixth Form pupil at the col­lege and Bal­ly is in­to his sec­ond year of a Bach­e­lor de­gree in Mu­sic at the Roy­al Hol­loway Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.

Bal­ly said the idea of the ven­ture came to them af­ter he ex­pe­ri­enced his own dilem­ma as a for­eign stu­dent. He said the in­au­gur­al con­cert was in part to help him fund his three-year pro­gramme in which he is cur­rent­ly en­rolled.

“He (Ajnish) was in­spired by his par­ents to form his own group. They are In­di­an clas­si­cal en­ter­tain­ers. Un­like his par­ents, Ajnish ven­tured in­to jazz, ca­lyp­so and west­ern clas­si­cal mu­sic.

“But, apart from this, we raised funds to as­sist me with my stud­ies in mu­sic. I am study­ing mu­sic abroad. I see this as not on­ly an op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to ben­e­fit, but to as­sist Ajnish’s ini­tia­tive to set up a bur­sary for young mu­si­cians who wish to study abroad; this will help them out.”

Bal­ly said they planned to make their pro­duc­tion an an­nu­al event, tak­ing the con­cert to dif­fer­ent parts of T&T. He said it was al­so an av­enue to as­sist young mu­si­cians with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get their tal­ents out and be heard.

The four-month-old group con­sists of eight vo­cal­ists, four pan­nists, and three gui­tarists.

To say the show was “ex­cel­lent” is an un­der­state­ment and it was par­tic­u­lar­ly thrilling to see young artistes per­form­ing sev­er­al clas­si­cals by the greats of yes­ter­year.

The wide and var­ied reper­toire per­formed at Bring Back the Old Time Days en­com­passed in­ter­na­tion­al jazz and clas­sics like Na­tal­ie and Nat King Cole’s Un­for­get­table; UB40’s Can’t Help Falling in Love (With You); Fred­die Jack­son’s Me and Mrs Jones; and, Frank Sana­tra’s New York, New York.

In the ca­lyp­so/ kaiso/chut­ney cat­e­go­ry, homage was paid the late great Lord Kitch­en­er, David Rud­der’s The Ganges Meet the Nile, Singing San­dra’s Dig­ni­ty and the Mighty Sniper’s Por­trait of Trinidad. —In­nis Fran­cis