Trinidad & Tobago, W.I. - The thirty-one small steel orchestras which qualified for the semi-finals after panyard judging, have drawn their playing positions for that next stage of competition on Saturday January 11, 2020 beginning 4:00 p.m. Forty bands had eventually faced the panel of judges in preliminary competition from the four regions: Northern,Eastern, South/Central and Tobago. The panel - Ezra Joseph, Joanna Shortt, Kenrick Noel and Vorbin Cordice - travelled to the individual panyards on a daily basis.
One of the bands from the Eastern region, Perfect Cadence, playing Ken “Professor” Philmore’s classic Pan By Storm as arranged by Mark Holder, will lead off this phase at the venue, Victoria Square, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. When Steel Talks’ Pan Tune of The Decade, ‘Trouble In The Morning’ is currently the front-runner as tune of choice by the steel orchestras in this category, at this point of competition, with nine performing the track as their Panorama tune of choice. In fact, the judges will hear four versions of the song back-to-back, when La Horquetta (LH) Pan Groove, Swavic,Simple Song and Alpha Pan Pioneers play in positions 6 through 9.
The short timeframe over the Christmas period until the semi-finals, will surely see the competitors brushing up and re-working their arrangements, in part possibly based on judges’ comments, if they were shared. Among them, the 2019 defending champion in the small category, T&T Defence Force Steel Orchestra will appear in position 23 out of 31. Champion arranger Duvone Stewart returned to work with the band, preparing them for their presentation of ‘Boots.’
Click here to see how the semi-finalists scored coming out of the preliminaries. Fourteen are expected to move on to the finals in the following week of January.
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