Paula Lindo – Our histories, stories, present, future.

“In creating Remembrance, I started to make my own nationalist statement using Trinbagonian elements of music.”

“Since I’m a choral musician, it had to contain a choir; since I’m trying to chart a new course for instrumental music with the National Philharmonic Orchestra, I had to also include them and because the first type of music I ever heard in my life at the age of five or six was Pan by Hatters Steel orchestra in San Fernando, it had to contain pan, and then I tied these elements together with a Kalinda song “Mumma Mumma, you son in he grave already, you son in he grave already, take a towel and band you belly” as a unifying thread from start to finish throughout the whole piece.”

Henry said his opus “Remembrance” is his bid at continuing the tradition of composers who take on the religious mass by setting texts to music. He was inspired by Johannes Brahm’s German Requiem Mass, where the classical composer took texts from the Bible and put them to music which reflected his country.

Henry said his intent is to create uniquely Trinibagonian music which is large-scale in scope. “It’s not just the Western cultures and the Western societies that can create things on a grand scale and to pull together orchestra, choir, pan, that’s pretty large. This is part of a long conversation that I have been trying to generate, which is to say that what we do here, our rhythms, sounds, instruments, all of these things are beautiful music too and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
He said the musical style is best described as being formal composition, where nothing is done by mistake. “The music is supposed to represent the psychology of what is going on in the foreground with the soloist/choir. When you’re doing something formal every little detail has meaning and the composer takes the time to add levels of meaning into the simplest thing of one note moving to the next or not, so I want people to recognize that point.”
Henry hopes musicians in T&T will begin to think about using formally composed music for scoring music for video games, movies and international audiences. “Right now we’re nowhere on the map and people don’t see it on the horizon because they don’t think of music in these terms. People like to look at mastery as being elitist, but there’s nothing wrong with mastering your craft. It’s about devotion to your craft and that’s something that we could afford to pay more attention to, here in T&T.”
Remembrance will be approximately 40 minutes in length when completed and comprises seven movements. Henry said the work is written to be performed by a full orchestra including strings, woodwinds, horms and drums as well as steelpan and choir.
Four movements were played at a concert on June 23 with performers from the NPO, National Steel Symphony Orchestra, UTT’S Academy for the Performing Arts Vocal Ensemble, Bravura Arts, soprano Natalia Dopwell and baritone Krisson Joseph, conducted by Henry. The full work will be premiered in September.