Wes­ley Gib­bings

To­ba­go-born arranger, Du­vone Stew­art, dom­i­nat­ed the Panora­ma semi­fi­nal stage Sun­day with bpTT Rene­gades and Pan El­ders earn­ing top ho­n­ours in the large and medi­um band cat­e­gories.

Stew­art’s arrange­ment of Year for Love for bpTT Rene­gades earned the band first place on 282 points in the large band cat­e­go­ry while Pan El­ders, with the 41-year-old arranger’s ver­sion of Lim­bo Break, scored 265 to re­main lodged in top po­si­tion among the medi­um-size bands.

Peren­ni­al large band favourites, Des­per­a­does, with a Carl­ton “Zan­da” Alexan­der arrange­ment of Year for Love, stepped up their act from a low-key per­for­mance in the pre­lim­i­nar­ies to move from a tied fifth place to sec­ond spot at Sun­day’s event.

The band was able to add 18 points to its pre­lim­i­nar­ies tal­ly of 260 and help move sec­ond-ranked Skif­fle down to fourth place— two points be­hind Phase II Pan Groove.

Like Stew­art, Alexan­der will have dou­ble du­ty on fi­nals night hav­ing al­so arranged for medi­um-size band Petrotrin Siparia Del­tones which placed third in the semis. Alexan­der and this south band re­cent­ly mourned the pass­ing of South African jazz icon, Hugh Masekela, who spent time with them in 2013.

A joint­ly pro­duced mu­sic al­bum is due for re­lease lat­er this year.

A bass player from Skiffle

Edison Boodoosingh

The Skif­fle de­mo­tion, mean­while, earned scep­ti­cal cries from many

in at­ten­dance, but the band was fol­lowed in the plac­ings by 2017 champs Massy Trinidad All Stars (272), FC Su­per­novas (270), Nu­trien Sil­ver Stars (269), Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus (268), Shell In­vaders (267) and MHTL Star­lift (263).

Exodus who scored 268 points on the night

Edison BoodooSingh

T&TEC Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps (262), NL­CB Fon­claire (261), RBC Re­demp­tion Sound Set­ters (259) and NGC La Brea Nightin­gales (253) did not qual­i­fy to play in the Feb­ru­ary 10 fi­nals.

Shell Invaders in action

Edison Boodoosingh

In the medi­um band cat­e­go­ry, Pan El­ders ac­tu­al­ly dropped 14 points in main­tain­ing

its lead. They were fol­lowed, by a mar­gin of eight points, by NL­CB Buc­cooneers on 271 points and Petrotrin Siparia Del­tones on 267.

The oth­er bands earn­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the fi­nals were Curepe Scherzan­do (266), Petrotrin Katzen­jam­mers (265) ty­ing with Courts Sound Spe­cial­ists of Laven­tille, San­gre Grande Cordettes (261), NL­CB Val­ley Harps (260) with the last two qual­i­fy­ing bands, Po­ten­tial Sym­pho­ny and Ari­ma An­gel Harps tied on 259 points.

Carib Dix­ieland (258), NGC Cou­va Joy­lan­ders (257), Pam­beri (256) and Pow­er Stars (253.5) trailed the pack.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, in the case of three tunes played by more than one band, the ap­pear­ances came back-to-back - in the case of Hel­lo, played con­sec­u­tive­ly by Skif­fle and Phase II; Year for Love by Rene­gades and Des­per­a­does in suc­ces­sion and Sweet for Days, played three times in a row by Ex­o­dus, Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps and FC Su­per­novas to close the show.

This meant that the 14 semi­fi­nal­ists in the large band cat­e­go­ry played just sev­en songs. In­side the Fes­ti­val was played twice, along with Light­ning Flash.

It was more of a mixed bag with the medi­um size bands, with many choos­ing durable stan­dards in­clud­ing Kitch­en­er’s Pan in A Mi­nor, Bri­go’s Lim­bo Break, Gov­ern­ment Boots by Gab­by and Mae­stro’s Fiery.

All-Stars in action during semi final action in the large band category on Sunday night.

Edison Boodoosingh

Pan Trin­ba­go field mar­shals were able to man­age a rel­a­tive­ly rapid flow of bands through­out the af­ter­noon and evening dur­ing a 10-hour show af­fect­ed by two au­dio “glitch­es” that de­layed the per­for­mances of To­ba­go band Katzen­jam­mers and slow-mov­ing St Au­gus­tine-based Ex­o­dus.

But the show sharply con­trast­ed with last year’s se­mi-fi­nal round which be­gan at 9.00 a.m. and end­ed at 3.45 a.m. the fol­low­ing morn­ing. This year, the small bands were made to com­pete on Sat­ur­day at Vic­to­ria Square in Port of Spain.

The Greens par­ty, a par­al­lel event or­gan­ised by Pan Trin­ba­go, did not bring out a large crowd and the par­ty mu­sic was clear­ly au­di­ble on the Panora­ma stage. An en­er­getic crowd turned out to pack the North Stand by the time the large bands hit the stage and the Grand Stand was close to 90 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy at around the same time.

As is cus­tom­ary, crowd size in the Grand Stand changes in keep­ing with the bands on stage. The end of Rene­gade’s per­for­mance, which came 10th in line, saw a sig­nif­i­cant ex­o­dus. The large North Stand crowd how­ev­er kept up the tem­po to the end.

The fi­nals for medi­um and large bands are set for Feb­ru­ary 10 at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah com­menc­ing at 7 pm. The draw for play­ing po­si­tions takes place on Thurs­day.

Four­teen small bands will com­pete for top ho­n­ours in their group on Feb­ru­ary 8 from 7 pm at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do.

Laven­tille Ser­e­naders leads the pack in this cat­e­go­ry, fol­lowed by Ari­ma Gold­en Sym­pho­ny and Gold­en Hands. Just one point sep­a­rat­ed each band from the oth­er fol­low­ing a keen con­test in­volv­ing 30 bands last Sat­ur­day.