Reading welcomes Aberdeen and New York for Notting Hill Carnival

[Pan Times]

Reading All Steel Percussion Orchestra (RASPO) is busy preparing for Notting Hill Carnival’s National ‘Panorama’ UK Steelband Championship taking place this weekend on Saturday 27 August 2011.

Sixteen players from Pandemic Steel Band based at Aberdeen’s Bucksburn Academy, New York drummer Keith J Marcelle and drill director Khuent Rose arrived in Reading on Monday to complete RASPO’s forty-five-piece orchestra for the final week of intense rehearsal before competing with five other steel bands for the title of ‘Champions of Steel’.

Iman Pascall (24), who is in Reading from New York’s Berklee College of Music, has arranged a ten-minute version of Destra’s ‘Calling Meh’, it is her first time as a UK Panorama arranger.

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[kenneth clarke]

Best of luck Iman and the Pandemic Steel Band

[Foy Barnes]

Hi Miss Iman, I am a huge fan.  I just wanted to wish you the best of luck in your UK Panorama debut.  Go out there, strut your stuff, be an inspiration to other young women and make me proud.  Show the men HOW IT IS DONE!  I have the utmost confidence in you.