GLITZY PREMIERE FOR GREENIDGE CD – From the Heart
December 18, 2003
Despite menacing weather, competing corporate Christmas events and overwhelming noise from what sounded like one helluva fete at the house next door (the Prime Minister’s official residence), the world premiere of Robert Greenidge’s CD From the Heart proceeded Saturday night, wowing its Under the Trees audience at Hotel Normandie.
Accompanied by Ralph MacDonald & The New York All Stars, a nine-member band of internationally famous musicians (further enhanced by local percussionist Tamba Gwinde), Greenidge played every song from his new CD in the show’s second half, falling in after the New York All Stars delivered three MacDonald originals, and continuing non-stop for more than 70 minutes.
The audience, which braved the last of Saturday’s marathon rain to get to The Normandie was, in a pre-show sequence, entertained by ten year-old Keisha Codrington, before taking their seats in front of a set designed by Gillian Bishop (The Signature Collection) for the three-hour show.
Among the notables supporting the pan event were Public Utilities and Environment Minister Pennelope Beckles, Hilton Trinidad general manager Ali Khan, Pan Trinbago president Patrick Arnold (and several members of his
executive), former pan president Owen Serrette, deputy chairman of National Carnival Commission (and Exodus manager) Ainsworth Mohammed.
In the first act, Sprangalang, infinitely more popular as a stand-up comic, astonished his audience with an informed monologue on the annual Steelband Panorama competition, stuffing detail into the 10-minute piece at no
sacrifice of his trademark laugh-a-minute lines, which were cleverly weaved into incisive comment on the event’s 40-year history.
Fresh from her triumph at the Caribbean Junior Steelband Music Festival, held eight nights earlier in Antigua, Mia Gormandy, now national and regional champion soloist, showed precisely why she got the judicial nod, by
playing Rimsky-Korsakoff’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee” and Stevie Wonder’s “Master Blaster”; earning rapturous applause.
Next up was veteran calypsonian Lord Superior, accompanying himself on guitar, rendering “Ah Want to Beat a Pan”, the 1968 story of a young boy’s response to parental questions about career options. He then did
“Standardise Pan”, a still extant call some 30 years after first airing and went even deeper into his catalogue to compare comment between the situation then and today’s anxieties, in a satirical song called “Crime Does Pay”.
Greenidge, who performed the national anthem as the curtain raiser, returned to close the first act, backed only by New York All Stars keyboardist Clinton Crawford, with a medley of his earlier compositions, inventive
interpretations of Errol Garner’s “Misty” and Eden Ahbez’s “Nature Boy”, plus a scintillating work called “Variations on Pan in A Minor” based on Kitchener’s hit song.
Act Two opened with The New York All Stars doing three MacDonald originals, “Mr Magic”, “Homegrown” and “Quickski”. Greenidge then returned to premiere the work from the CD From the Heart. He played “If I Never See You Again” and the title song, before Grammy-Award winning vocalist Nadirah Shakoor joined to render the breakout track “Love Me Up in the Morning”.
We then heard “My Heart” and the first of the Panorama offerings “Dark Horse” before Shakoor returned to deliver “Just the Two of Us”, a song originally written in tribute to Trinidad and Tobago and “Paradise Garden”; ushering Shakoor back to the stage for “Kiss Kiss” in which background vocals from bassist Will Lee, guitarist Jeff Mirinov and Crawford topped their earlier interventions.
Greenidge did a stirring solo interpretation of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust”, following it with “Rosie”, another of the preferred “pan” songs, this one the intended show-closer, although the audience would have none of that and demanded an encore; getting “All Night Long” as the evening ended and patrons formed a line to get their CD purchases autographed.
Saturday’s world premiere of From the Heart was produced by Terry Joseph, for executive producers Ralph MacDonald, Robert Greenidge and Fred Chin Lee.
The show is scheduled for travel to several countries early in 2004 as part of continuing promotion for the release.
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