NIGEL CAMPBELL
The long and short of it is that for $250 and with three hours of solid live music performances, Johann Chuckaree’s concert at the Queen’s Hall on June 18, His Story, was a value-for-money entertainment spectacle that signifies in this post-Taste-of-Carnival, post-covid lockdown TT, that what these musicians and singers have been holding back for the past 24 months was awaiting the right event release valve to satisfy an eager audience slowly coming out once again for shows.
Chuckaree’s star-studded cast of guests, supported by a crack band featuring Enrico Camejo and Adrian Kong and others, provided for the engagement of a new kind of reckoning of what can make or break for audiences locally, or even internationally, if it ever comes to that. Singers of romantic ballads, island rock, reggae classics, Bollywood songs, and soca, real and revised, performed along with top instrumentalists on steelpan and piano to balance the show with a kind of all-encompassing take of what is possible and available in this island. And it was not too much. Song and tune choice make a difference in any show, and here it was just enough to not encourage grumbling murmurs, early walk-outs or flat applause responses.
[caption id="attachment_960742" align="alignnone" width="715"] Johann Chuckaree performs at his concert, entitled His Story at Queen’s Hall on June 18. -[/caption]
Four steelpan musicians vied for the unenviable position of being stand-out instrumental performer on Saturday. One can say the instrument was the stand-out. Icon Len "Boogsie" Sharpe caressed his double second pans on Frank Sinatra’s My Way as a solo piece showcasing a tour de force display of simultaneous touch dexterity and musical knowledge to move music beyond the ordinary to the sublime. He then performed a duet with Chuckaree on Trini to the Bone that began a trend among the pannists that night, the steelpan duet with the concert’s headliner that drove the energy upwards and excitedly beyond.
[caption id="attachment_960740" align="alignnone" width="759"] Nishard M, left and Johann Chuckaree provide a flamboyant Bollywood moment with dancers in tow. -[/caption]
Dan Gulston, Mister Excitement himself, who with Chuckaree proved that duelling pans can and do showcase their trademark 16th note rapid arpeggios that make for gleeful ovation as often as they can dance, play, and speedily run through all the notes on the pan. A better sound reinforcement that night may have put these displays over the top, but as examples of how the instrument can elicit positive responses from an audience in a concert hall outside of the Panorama ambience, this worked.
Joshua Regrello is a new kind of steelpan entertainer who is the full package of witty banter, self-effacing humour, and skilful playing. His multiple on-off entrances, jokingly and wordlessly hinting at a louder ovation every time worked, even after four tries. A constant broad smile and a connection to an audience he met at their level, he ex
