Not even a kitchen fire could stop Sat­ur­day evening’s launch of Panora­ma 2019, host­ed by Pan Trin­ba­go Inc at the Char­lotte Street pa­n­yard of de­fend­ing Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on bpTT Rene­gades. The blaze quick­ly ex­tin­guished, pro­ceed­ings be­gan with a bless­ing by Dea­con Lennox Tou­s­saint.

Ad­mis­sion to the launch was free but pa­trons were in­vit­ed to make a do­na­tion up­on en­try. De­liv­er­ing an up­beat and spir­it­ed ad­dress, new­ly-elect­ed Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore ex­tend­ed an open in­vi­ta­tion to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port this year’s com­pe­ti­tion, es­pe­cial­ly the new North Park. Em­pha­sis­ing that “free­ness done in pan,” the pres­i­dent said there would be a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion of com­pli­men­ta­ry tick­ets to be giv­en out.

Ram­sey-Moore gave a de­tailed sched­ule for ad­ju­di­ca­tion in each of the cat­e­gories of com­pe­ti­tion, be­gin­ning with the Jan­u­ary 22 judg­ing of Sin­gle Pan steel­bands.

Sat­ur­day’s launch was at­tend­ed by Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez, past Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers in­clud­ing for­mer pres­i­dent Owen Ser­rette, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of steel­bands, in­clud­ing Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus cap­tain Julie Williams. Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so at­tend­ed but left ear­ly to at­tend an­oth­er en­gage­ment. One of the evening’s high­lights was the pre­miere per­for­mance by The Ex­ec­u­tive Band, an en­sem­ble com­pris­ing the new Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive.

Ram­sey-Moore, man­ag­er of To­ba­go’s Katzen­jam­mers Steel Or­ches­tra, re­vealed that it was the first time she was ac­tu­al­ly play­ing the na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

Af­ter the en­sem­ble per­formed a cou­ple se­lec­tions, Rene­gades per­formed, open­ing its set with a laid­back ren­di­tion of it’s 2018 win­ning tune of choice, Voice’s Year for Love.

Keep­ing guests en­ter­tained for the rest of the pro­gramme was pop­u­lar “pan DJ” KC Class is Class.

Even af­ter the launch end­ed, guests stayed on, lis­ten­ing to Rene­gades re­hearse this year’s Na­tion­al Panora­ma tune of choice, Na­dia Bat­son’s Hookin’ Mih, arranged by Du­vonne Stew­art.