Paula Lindo - Newsday
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Jubilant members of the Scarborough Methodist Primary School after they won in the Primary Schools folk choir category in 2018. category. -
The 33rd Biennial TT Music Festival has made sweeping changes to its composition. Festival chairman Jessel Murray said this was to make the event, which runs from March 1-28, more audience- and social-media-friendly.
One major change has been the consolidation of several classes and the retirement of others. Murray said 15-20 per cent of the competitive classes were either dropped or put on hold, with 148 out of 220 remaining. Musicianship classes such as sightreading were also retired.
“For instance, in the junior classes, there were several choir classes aimed at the same people, so they were consolidated. In the open classes, there were separate classes for sopranos, mezzo-sopranos and contraltos, and these have now been consolidated into one class for women soloists. The same has been done on the men’s side.
"We also kept the rapso class, which we are pleased to see has had an increase in entries. In addition, the composition class has been reserved only for steelpan pieces, so that we can grow the amount of steelpan repertoire in TT through the festival.”
Murray said to make the event more attractive to audiences, there would now be genre days for choir, steelpan, piano and other categories. Morning sessions have been consolidated to allow more schools to attend. The morning and evening sessions are at a cost, while the afternoon sessions are free, to attract greater audience turnout.
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