The Trinidad & Tobago National Music Festival – Pan Is Beautiful XII will be held later this year under the banner “Respect The Steelpan… Play It With Pride”.
Produced by Pan Trinbago Inc., the Festival is divided into four (4) categories ie Soloists, Ensemble, Single Pan Bands and Orchestra.
Preliminaries run from October 05th (Single Pan), October 06th (Soloists and Ensembles) and October 12th (Orchestra) with the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port of Spain, Trinidad, as the venue of choice.
At the close of registration on July 05th, 31 Soloists, 14 Ensembles, 10 Single Pan Bands and 14 Orchestras have signaled their attention to participate.
From the above, six (6) Soloists, six (6) Ensembles, eight (8) Single Pan Bands and eight (8) Orchestras will be selected on merit for the Grand Finals.
Although dates, November 09th and 16th, for the Finals in all categories have been confirmed, venues with the exception of the Orchestra (Jean Pierre Complex, Wrightson Road), are yet to be finalized.
Dr. Leroy “The Black Stalin” Calliste’s compositions have been selected as test pieces in three (3) categories ie “Respect the Steelband” (Ensemble), “Black Man Feeling to Party” (Single Pan Band), and “Mr. Pan Maker” (Orchestra). Four (4) adjudicators, three (3) Sitting and one (1) Alternate, will officiate at each phase of the competitions.
Participants will compete for a total of $2.1 million in cash prizes and trophies. Certificates of Participation will be presented to each competitor. In addition, there will be trophies for the Best Test Piece, Best Tune of Choice and Champion in each of the categories.
Pan Is Beautiful XII was originally carded for October 2011. Several reasons were attributed to the postponement among which were the availability of a suitable venue, limited funding and the Declaration and Extension of the State of Emergency.
submitted by: Media and communication news desk of Pantrinbago
Replies
I glad to hear bout this, I hope Pan Trinbago will keep these dates Nov 9th & 16th (Finals) so that people can make plans to go to T&T for this occasion. I would like to go, so if everything goes OK for me I will be there.
The holding of This competition has been long overdue. This is great for the pan movement. i hope there are Foreign Adjudicators who may not have any bias towards local preferences. The competition must provide the highest standard of musicology and to, show as in the old days, and previous Pan Is Beautiful competitions the ability of the arrangers to transpose pieces written by the masters to the highest level, so that our beautiful instrument can be identified with all others.
Why does it have to be "identified with all others"? It either IS or it is ISN'T.
Because some interpret the ability to play music written for a whole different family of instruments centuries ago as the be-all-end-all of musical greatness...