For 40 years Signal Hill Alumni Choir (SHAC) has been mesmerising audiences, both locally and abroad, with its magical music, amazing choreography and costuming.
To celebrate this significant milestone, SHAC has set aside an entire year, from November 2023 to November 2024, to host a series of events under the theme – 2064: A Musical Odyssey.
Included in these happenings is a series of four concerts, themed Music that Moves, featuring a star-studded cast of choirs that are also 40 and over. They include the Lydian Singers, Marionettes Chorale, Love Movement, Southernaires Choir and Music Amateurs of Tobago. These choirs will be performing along with versatile individuals and groups, in Trinidad and in Tobago over the next three weekends.
Naparima Bowl, San Fernando, is venue for the first concert on September 21, from 6.30 pm.
The other three concerts will be held at Central Bank Auditorium on September 28 and 29 and at Shaw Park Complex, Tobago, on October 6.
This final concert is being held under the patronage of President Christine Kangaloo and will feature Benjai, Stephanie Joseph, Lynette Louis, Jaime Ramsey and Music Amateurs Choir.
For its first concert, SHAC has teamed up with a lovely mix of the voices from the Southernaires Choir, one of the south’s leading choirs which is well known for its vast repertoire.
Alongside Southernaires will be versatile pannist Joshua Regrello and singer Neval Chatelal. The St Hilaire Brothers will also bring the gospel genre to the stage, in a style reminiscent of the four-men vocal groups, like the Temptations, from the late 1960s and 1970s.
Media and marketing consultant Caroline Ravello, an "honorary Signalite," agreed the brothers “bring that nostalgia, beautiful voices and harmonies.”
[caption id="attachment_1109754" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The St Hilaire Brothers will perform at the Signal Hill Alumni Choir (SHAC) opening concert for its 40th anniversary celebrations at Naparima Bowl, San Fernando.- Yvonne Webb[/caption]
She said the inclusion of pan as part of its concert repertoire was a deliberate action by artistic director John Arnold to show support for the now formally declared national instrument of TT.
While there was a desire to have both Regrello and Chatelal perform at the four concerts, their international schedules have prevented this from happening.
“These two young men are keeping the culture alive. Both Neval and Joshua perform internationally. In fact, Joshua who was in the United States for a concert with Vaughnette Bigford recently, is in China promoting TT culture and will be back on Friday. He will be missing rehearsals but will be here for the concert.”
Renowned for its choralography and movement in making the music visual, SHAC is promising to live up to the Music that Moves theme, with an expansive range of genres from jazz to gospel, calypso and soca, reggae, world music, as well as folk.
Singer Brenda Butler will be on stage, lending her vocal cords this time around as the hostess.
Explaining the concep
