Entertainment

Rossi Joseph

Photo: Nicholas Bhajan

Back On Track; Sport Returns

by Sheldon Waithe

Sport became both the hope and beacon for life during the pandemic and in the aftermath of the gradual reopening of society. Fans looked to the nation’s talented sportsmen to provide welcome distraction in global events such as the summer and winter Olympics, and local events that signalled the resumption of beloved competitive action.

The Trinidad & Tobago Automobile Sport Association (TTASA) hosted a race day that perfectly captured the aspects of the the past, present and future. ‘Return to Motorsport: Memorial Day’ was held in late February 2022, at the Frankie Boodram Wallerfield International Raceway, which was a site for drive-through vaccinations. It was held as a celebration of motorsport racing but also as a tribute to the lives lost to the Coronavirus.

In addition to the thrill of traditional circuit racing, fans were treated to cart racing, motorbike racing (where Rossi Joseph provided ample warning of his intentions this season with three wins from three races) and the head-to-head favourite, drag racing. A new event, the Mazda Miyata Class, was won by the experienced Ravi Singh, a driver that has won races abroad while representing T&T. The race is based on all drivers in the same type of car, making skill a larger factor in the results by creating equality amongst the vehicles.

By adding Grid Khana – head-to-head racing between two street cars - and Auto Cross, a slower timed event between cones, TTASA has created a rich programme to take motorsport forward in the coming years.

Nicholas Paul

Photo: Richard Lyder The sports world was rocked by the passing of 2012 Olympic medallist Deon Lendore, after a January 2022 car accident in Texas. Fellow runner Jereem Richards vowed to honour his memory, doing so in the greatest manner by winning the 400m title at the World Athletics Indoor Championship, in March 2022.

Dylan Carter’s amazing consistency netted him national records and podium places; he collected a bagful of medals in the International Swimming League, before the icing on the cake, silver at the World Swimming Championships in the 50m Butterfly, in December 2021. Fellow Olympian Nicholas Paul mirrored the achievement on the global stage when he rode to a silver medal in the Kilometre Time Trial at the 2021 Track Cycling World Championships. Maintaining the medals on the world stage, heavyweight boxer Nigel Paul brought home a bronze from the World Boxing Championships.

The powerful Motul Monster repeated its victory in the 53rd Great Race, a staple of the national sporting calendar, completing the arduous 91-miles from Port of Spain to Store Bay in 1 hour and five minutes.

Spinner Anisa Mohammed reached a major landmark in cricket when she became only the fourth woman to take 300 wickets at international level, achieving the feat at the Women’s World Cup. In the men’s game, after his shock move from Trinbago Knight Riders to St Kitts & Nevis Patriots, Dwayne Bravo defied the odds by leading his new team to their inaugural Caribbean Premier League title. Wicketkeeper/batsman Joshua Da Silva took a major step forward when he scored his maiden Test century against England in Grenada. With the series in the balance after two draws, Da Silva’s timing was as perfect as his strokeplay, playing a pivotal role in the West Indies winning the series.

In December 2021, there was faint hope that T&T would be represented on the unlikely stage of the 2022 Winter Olympics. By the time that the Olympic flame was lit in Beijing, the bobsleigh team of Andre Marcano, Axel Brown and Shakeel John ensured that the red white & black returned to the Winter Games after a twenty-year absence. Finishing in 28th place, the team laid down a marker of possibilities for the next four-year cycle.

Major events like the 2022 Commonwealth Games, will provide further arenas for T&T’s sportsmen and sportswomen, to continue to shine.

PanNotation For the love of pan

Pan lovers are in for a treat thanks to PanNotation, a one-of-a-kind online platform where users can purchase music scores written specifically for pan, access and share educational materials, and benefit from the sale of arrangements as well as compositions. “The dream is that the site becomes a central doorway for the pan community to share their history, stories, individual, band, community ideas for music education, and the acceleration of knowledge-musical and historical,” Mark Loquan, who developed the concept of PanNotation and currently serves as the chairman of the company, explained. “Also, the dream is that the site is the first place to go for music educators, pan enthusiasts, students, community and school bands, teachers, and collectors of historical pan information,” Loquan added. “The vision is that people use the site to share their knowledge in the form of podcasts, videos, and scores, where they can explain why they do what they do. The site should earn commercial value for all those contributing scores, with an element of sustainability via a not-forprofit organization assisting initiatives or people to advance in their field or to help communities through other pan NGOs.” Just shy of 300 registered users that span the globe, PanNotation started as a way to offer steelpan arrangers and composers an avenue in which to sell their music scores to an international market. A not-for-profit arm of PanNotation is in the initiation stages where any surplus earnings above cost can be used for pan sustainability initiatives. Dr Mia Gormandy-Benjamin, the company’s CEO, has been a part of the development from the early stages. “We have found that many pannists and steelbands internationally have had limited access to music scores, and arrangers and composers have limited avenues in which to make their music easily accessible to an international audience, PanNotation bridges this gap. In addition, steelpan educators around the world have struggled to get access to quality information about the steelpan. PanNotation now offers a subscriptionbased library of academic articles, steelband profiles, podcasts, and an array of educational materials. The company also aims to support the sustainability of the instrument through its not-for-profit, which can assist with steelpan scholarships, preservation projects, and global collaborative efforts, just to name a few.” Already, many people who learn about PanNotation are excited about the idea and have registered. “We still have to tap into steelpan communities around the world to ensure everyone has access to our site” GormandyBenjamin noted. PanNotation will be hosting a Virtual Steelpan Conference on April 30, 2022, where all pannists, pan enthusiasts, academics, professionals, and anyone interested in furthering the art form, can come together, network, share ideas, and work toward a more sustainable future for steelpan professionals.

For more information visit https://pannotation.wordpress.com/2022/01/19/ pannotations-virtual-steelpan-conference/ You can also visit www.pannotation.com or follow PanNotation on Instagram and Facebook.

Meet a Trini CHELSEA FENSOM

By Anna Walcott-Hardy

“From as long as I can recall, I enjoyed listening to my older sister practise and play the piano. I would sing every Parang by heart and my parents would take my sister and I to the Savannah to watch the steel bands on ‘the Drag’ for Panorama. At some point, I realised that I wanted to be a part of this, to be able to create and enjoy music with others and not only listen to it.”

Growing-up in a close-knit family in Cocorite, Trinidad, helped nurture Chelsea Fensom’s love of music and the Carnival season, as did living in an island where the genre is everevolving and ubiquitous. She began playing the violin at the age of seven, followed by the steel pan a year later, and then the cello when she was just ten. The youngest person to receive Level 4 and 6 Diplomas on the cello in the English-speaking Caribbean, Chelsea remains grateful to mentors like Jean-Marc Aimey, Kenneth Listhrop, Francis Pau, Manab Naskar and her uncle, Kenneth Guppy. A graduate of St Joseph’s Convent, Port of Spain, the twenty-year-old is currently studying Civil Engineering at The University of the West Indies.

How has growing-up in Trinidad and Tobago impacted your growth as a musician?

It surely halted some opportunities that I could’ve experienced as compared to studying music abroad. Being a classically-trained musician, there was a period of about six years, when I didn’t have a cello teacher simply due to the fact that there aren’t enough cello students for a foreign teacher to come and teach. However, there are several music genres unique to Trinidad and Tobago like Soca and Parang and it widened my scope of the possibilities of the types of music I can experience, and made me more open to other genres around the world such as Zouk.

How did your parents support you along the way?

My parents are my main fans and the biggest influences on the musician that I am today. They always went out of their way to drop and pick me up from every single rehearsal and performance I had. Can you imagine travelling in a maxi [taxi] with a cello? Even when I felt like giving-up during a difficult time in my life, they continuously pushed me to persevere and break out of that time.

How has the pandemic affected your plans?

Unfortunately, with the pandemic, having school only in an online format has hindered my ability to meet my new classmates and experience the true ‘university life’. COVID had also put a stop to many of my music opportunities and performances at the time, but thankfully now the quarantine has lessened.

How have you been able to cope with the challenges of the pandemic?

Having a lot of free-time has given me ample opportunity to improve my technique on my instruments, and open a path of creating music of my own, which I had never considered before. Also, I learnt a lot of new skills such as baking and kayaking.

What guidance would you give to others interested in music?

I would encourage them to follow their dreams, to practise, practise, practise, and never give up! Music is a language that all can understand if we simply try to.

Dream Weddings

Planning during a pandemic

Planning a wedding is a heady mix of excitement and anxiety in the best of times, pair this with a pandemic and it becomes a monumental challenge. Yet for many couples, the process strengthened their bond and made them realize what truly matters.

Marina & Johann

Marina Gonsalves and Johann Mitterhauser know first-hand that it’s best to have a positive attitude, lots of patience and an ability to adapt.

“I got married to the love of my life in the most intimate setting, surrounded by those closest to us. Although lots of important people in our lives could not be there, we wouldn’t change our day for the world.”

They married in June 2021 during a national lock-down when Covid-19 cases were on the rise and the public gathering allotment was reduced from 150 people to 10. Marina moved the location from a restaurant, when alcohol restrictions were put in place, to the family home.

“On the evening of Tuesday 15 June 2021, the Government held an emergency press conference to inform the nation that for the upcoming weekend on Saturday 19 - Sunday 20 June, there would be an enforced lockdown and citizens would only be able to operate between 5 am - 10 am on both days. Our wedding planner, Taylor Abraham, quickly called us to ask what we would like to do and we decided that if by some miracle we could move the wedding up one day to Friday 18 June, we would do it. Luckily, we called all the vendors and mostly everyone was available. We prepared virtual packages and distributed them for our Zoom guests.”

Ultimately, the event went off perfectly with most guests enjoying the reception online. Marina’s key takeaway is simply to have an open mind. “It was always important to us to keep close to each other, keep each other calm as a couple and remind ourselves of the reason we were getting married all along.”

Marina chose their elegant home, but the islands also have some of the most striking destinations in the world, outfitted with modern amenities, from seaside villas to estate houses, yachts and grand ballrooms. Undoubtedly, the country’s a foodie’s dream, so many couples add spice to the menu with local fare - Doubles, Roti, Crab and Dumpling or traditional sweets. Live entertainment is also a popular choice, along with the DJ, some weddings have special appearances by a Calypsonian, Soca artist or a pannist; or like our next couple, have a violinist and guitarist perform at the church ceremony and reception, then for the grand finale, end the night with -Tassa Drummers.

Rebecca & Josh

After living abroad for several years, Rebecca Walcott and Joshua Romany returned home, got engaged and planned their February 2022 wedding in just six months.

“For our wedding we made sure to be creative and openminded during the planning process. The pandemic profoundly adjusted our day-to-day reality, so it’s important to not sweat the small stuff. We ended-up choosing a ‘hybrid’ style. This allowed for international guests to take part in the ceremony virtually, while also keeping in-person numbers down. It’s also important to work with vendors you trust. That way, on the day of, whatever goes right, or wrong, is in the right hands.”

The day goes past very quickly, so Rebecca also suggests placing extra focus on the pre-planning phase, for instance: having a change-of-date clause in vendor contracts; a wedding website to invite guests, track responses and access your registry; a photography and videography shot-list with sample poses; a practice session for bridal hair and makeup; and creating a sanitization station for guests. Event Planner Savanna Lake, also ensured there was a detailed wedding-day timeline. The garden celebration was truly memorable, but the rising cases made the planning a challenge. Yet Rebecca and Josh agree that it was well worth it, with even the weather co-operating and guests dancing until midnight. Now happily married, both couples look back fondly on their wedding day when in the midst of a crisis, although all may not have gone as planned - everything was absolutely perfect.

Real time to Celebrate

Vintage Imports

More than just a wine store Located on the corner of Hunter and Damian Streets is an iconic little wine shop that has become a distinctive landmark in Woodbrook. Since opening its doors 25 years ago, Vintage Imports has become known for its expertly curated selection of fine wines, and the family-like atmosphere that draws you in as you enter. This wine store has expanded its offering over the years to satisfy a market that is becoming increasingly sophisticated and curious in its palate. Award-winning rums and bespoke whiskies now line the shelves alongside stalwarts in the wine world and new, interesting finds. Gift ideas abound – from wedding appropriate crystal to fun accessories for wine infused seaside get-aways. With a little something for everyone and every occasion, Vintage Imports undoubtedly lives up to its reputation as being more than just a wine store. Tel: (868) 622-2883