History of the Lydian Steel

One evening in October 1994, the newly formed Solo Pan Knights Steelband was at rehearsal in their panyard. The pannists were hard at work preparing their pieces for “Pan is Beautiful V”, the Trinidad and Tobago National Steelband Music Festival. A surprise visitor was announced. Pat Bishop, doyenne of Trinidad and Tobago’s Steelband music scene and Musical Director of The Lydian Singers, was doing the round of panyards to listen to pannists in the early stages of rehearsal and had dropped in to hear the new band. A Steelband rehearsal usually consists of the pannists learning pieces by rote with each phrase repeated until learnt. Entire pieces of music with complex arrangements have to be committed to memory by each member of the band before performance. When Pat Bishop entered Solo Pan Knights panyard she was greeted with an amazing sight. She saw a group of young persons playing music while engrossed in reading score sheets under the baton of Ben Jackson. Here at last were pannists who could learn quickly, could adapt easily to change and who could have an unlimited repertoire. Here was a vision of glorious possibilities for the future of Steelband. After the Festival, Pat proposed to Ben Jackson that the band accompany The Lydian Singers at their annual Christmas concert. At the time, Ben was also Musical Director of Success Stars Pan Sounds Steelband, a school-based Steelband whose players had formed the core of Solo Pan Knights for the Festival season. It was this former group along with another Steelband, The Entertainers that, in 1994, provided the first Steelband accompaniment for The Lydian Singers.

The following year when the fused group had become a more cohesive body, they undertook their first major work by accompanying The Lydian Singers in Frederick Delius’ “Koanga”. This was a historic event of global musical significance as it was the first time that a steel band had accompanied a complete opera. The combination of steel and electronic instruments produced a brand new and wondrous sound which became the signature accompanying sound for The Lydian Singers. The band was now so closely identified with The Lydian Singers that it became known as The Lydian Steel.

During the years 1996 to 1998, Lydian Steel played an increasingly essential role in The Lydian Singers performances. Lydian Steel accompanied The Lydian Singers at the Easter concerts, the Festival Sundays in July as well as the annual Christmas concerts. In this period Lydian Steel and The Lydian Singers undertook several major works together, including, in December 1996, their second opera, Donizetti’s “L’Elisir D’Amour”. There were also welcome opportunities for showcasing the talent of individual pannists in solo performances of works such as Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s “Second Piano Concerto”. In August 1999, the band accompanied The Lydian Singers in yet another opera – Puccini’s “Turandot” which ran for fifteen performances.

The composition of the membership of Lydian Steel continued to evolve, with a significant change occurring in the latter half of 1999. While in the planning stage for the performance of Mozart’s “Piano Concerto in A major (K488)”, Pat met with Lorraine Granderson, music teacher of Bishop Anstey High School and director of the school’s progressive and accomplished senior steel ensemble. It was agreed that the two steelbands would work at performing this challenging concerto together and almost immediately rehearsals began.

This new group, comprising ten school-age girls and the original Lydian Steel members – at the time eight mainly boys from Success Laventille – were, quite surprisingly, a well-matched set. The old Lydian Steel members brought experience and raw panyard-honed pan playing talent and the Bishops girls brought music-reading ability and a naïveté that was inspiring, both to the new Lydian Steel collective and to Pat herself.

As for the actual performance of the Mozart, it was brilliant, with the pan superbly complementing the virtuoso playing of accomplished Lydian accompanist, Lindy-Ann Bodden-Ritch. That night in November 1999 at Queen’s Hall marked the beginning of a journey of growth, both in musicianship and maturity of a very special group of young people.

The year 2000 brought new challenges to the band, most notably the Brahms “Requiem”. This work for Easter 2000 was the first major work that the new Lydian Steel performed with The Lydian Singers and was a plunge into untested waters if there ever was one – both challenging and exciting. This experience also marked the ensemble’s first church pilgrimage with the choir. Many nights of coming back to Bishops on the bus with tenor pans being cradled on the laps of dozing players helped to build character and stamina, as well as camaraderie. At the end of the year, The Lydian’s annual Christmas concert allowed Lydian Steel to shift into a different mode, accompanying the choir and the dancers for some of the pieces in “The New Genesis”. This original work was composed in part by John Jacob, the choir’s de facto folk/calypso arranger. Over the years, John has come to treat the band as an extension of the choir; teaching the singers a new song and then every few lines hastily yelling out some chord progressions in the band’s general direction. In this slightly haphazard yet functional system, the raw musical talent of the members of Lydian Steel becomes evident as any discrepancies in John’s arrangement are quickly corrected.

The next step for Lydian Steel was really the major leap in the development of the ensemble. At the invitation of the Miami Bach Society, the band performed on the opening night of their 2nd Annual Tropical Baroque Music Festival at Fairchild Tropical Gardens in Coral Gables, Miami. The major works for this concert were the “Brandenburg Concerto no.2 in F major” (Bach) and the “Air and Gigue from Orchestral Suite in D major” (Bach). The performance was further enhanced by the presence of guest soloist Michael Zephyrine. The response of the Festival audience and organisers was nothing short of tumultuous. The Executive Director of the Society declared that, “the musicians are to be lauded for their intensity and focus and the absolute beauty, both aurally and visually, of their performance.” The Society went on to pay the highest compliment to Lydian Steel by breaking one of its own rules of not inviting a group back the year following their performance by immediately asking the ensemble to return to Florida to open the Festival in 2002.

The Miami 2001 experience firmly established Baroque music as the period of choice for The Lydian Steel. It also helped to gel the band both musically and personally and, after such an excursion, a short hiatus was certainly in order. There was no such luck however and in April the band performed with The Lydian Singers in a concert series entitled “Music for Easter” followed in August by another concert series with the touring Magdalen College Choir of Oxford University, England.

The Lydian Steel concert, entitled “Basically Baroque”, was held in November 2001 at Under the Trees, Hotel Normandie and was the first such event to be staged by the band at home in Trinidad. Selections from the Baroque Festival repertoire were performed and the individual talents of the band were also on display with pan solos by Sophia Subero and Kareem Brown and a piano solo of an original composition by Astra Noel. This concert was very well received and was yet another step forward for the band in its quest to be recognised as its own legitimate entity and not only an accompaniment to the choir.

March 2nd, 2002 met a 16-member strong Lydian Steel on stage for their second appearance at the opening of the Tropical Baroque Music Festival in Coral Gables, Miami. The major work for that year was to become one of the landmark achievements of The Lydian Steel. Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” was more technically challenging, longer and incidentally, faster than anything the band had ever attempted before. The piece has now become a standard in the band’s repertoire. Miami 2002 also featured the ensemble’s major collaboration with pianist Lindy-Ann Bodden Ritch. This piece was Bach’s “Harpsichord Concerto no.5 in F minor”. In addition, the band performed Corelli’s “Concerto Grosso no.8 in G minor (The Christmas Concerto)”, a work which was debuted at the previous year’s Christmas concert as a stunning collaboration between The Lydian Steel and the Caribbean School of Dancing.

The quality of that year’s performance won the band a special place in the hearts of the Festival organisers and an invitation has been extended every year since. However, the ensemble did not make the trip in 2003 due to the fact that many of the members were in the middle of Cambridge A-level examinations preparations.

Yet somehow the band still managed, albeit with a much reduced side, to make it to New York in June 2003 for successful joint performances with The Lydian Singers and David Rudder at the prestigious Brooklyn Centre for the Performing Arts. The year’s other engagements included the benefit concert for rising young baritone star Michael Zephyrine and an appearance at Pan Royale with Robert Greenidge as a guest performer.

Soon enough it was 2004 and Lydian Steel was once again opening the Tropical Baroque Music Festival on March 6th. Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks” and Telemann’s “Suite in A major” were the works of choice that year. The performance was made all the more special due to the collaboration between the steelpans and the viola da gambas of accomplished musician Jay Bernfeld; an unorthodox combination, the outcome of which was surprisingly harmonious.

The 25th anniversary celebrations of The Lydian Singers (also the 10th anniversary of The Lydian Steel) began in a magnificent manner from September 2004 with the Monteverdi “Vespers”, performed in fifteen churches throughout the course of the month. This work really stretched the musical capabilities of the band members and the experience served to further enhance the skills of the ensemble.

Next up was, the annual Miami tour in March 2005 which featured Vivaldi’s Concerto no. 10, not to mention a handful of brand new members. Then it was off to Tobago with the choir to celebrate the mutual anniversaries of the National Gas Company (our then sponsors), The Lydian Singers and Steel and the Signal Hill Alumni Choir. The band then turned its attention to furious preparation for its own concert in April and the choir’s production of Gluck’s “Orpheus and Euridice” in September 2005.

In 2008, Scenes from the Song of Hiawatha [Coleridge Taylor/Longfellow] saw all cast and orchestra in native costume to present a very moving and emotional story. In 2009, The Messiah [Handel] was performed complete with African and Indian drums and African folk dancers. In 2010, Misa Cubana [Vitier] gave us an opportunity to play fresh authentic regional music with challenging rhythms and harmonies. To this day the “Plegaria” from this work is one of our most regularly performed pieces. In 2012, Vivaldi’s Gloria was the year’s major undertaking. In 2014, as part of the 35th Anniversary performances, Verdi’s Requiem was performed at St. Finbar’s RC and Trinity Cathedral. This work was very well received and tested the capabilities of the choir, Steel and guest orchestra to the absolute limits.

In 2015, The Lydian Steel celebrated its 20th anniversary and was featured in a special way in that year’s Christmas production at Queen’s Hall. New young members have joined and have contributed their talents not only as players, but also as arrangers, taking a type of initiative we are happy to encourage. We can proudly say that, even given The Lydians recent challenges of finding a new home and navigating our new responsibilities to our corporate supporter, First Citizens, the group has managed to stick together. WE continue to provide support to the choir and to the organization as a whole and also strengthen our own identity.

While The Lydian Steel’s membership, repertoire and capabilities have evolved over the years, one thing that has not changed and that still sets the band apart from most other steel orchestras in the country is the ability of all the members to read music. In a way, this necessity has sometimes hampered the growth of the band as it has often happened that prospective members do not last very long, being intimidated by the sight-reading ability of the band and the sheer volume of music that the players may be expected to absorb in one session. 23

It is also important to remember that Lydian Steel is essentially a group of young people. Currently, the age range is between 16 and 35. A large proportion of the original core members passed through half of secondary school while in the band, juggling the commitments of CXC and A-level examinations and, most recently, university, with the long practise hours that the performance schedule and musical repertoire of The Lydian Steel require.

The band in its many incarnations – at one time not too long ago the members numbered six in total – has boasted and continues to boast multitalented members. Among the ranks of Lydian Steel are talented soloists, arrangers, composers, pianists, dancers, artists and others. There is also originality in the band in the actual arrangement of the pans. Lydian Steel pioneered the use of three tenor pans by one player, either in the configuration of two double tenors and a tenor or two double seconds and a tenor.

While Lydian Steel can cite many achievements of its own, the band has also been instrumental in assisting other steelbands to achieve success. In fact, it was through the support the band members were providing for Solo Pan Knights on that fateful day in 1994, that they came together as a unit which formed the nucleus of Lydian Steel. In the finals of the competition of the 1994 Festival, Solo Pan Knights placed fourth. The unit continued assisting the Solo Pan Knights and prepared them to enter their first Panorama competition. This is the premier steelband competition in Trinidad and Tobago and it is held during the Carnival season. More than a hundred steelbands, many long-established and well organised, compete fiercely for top honours in that competition. The fledgeling Solo Pan Knights gained fourth place in the 1995 Panorama Competition.

In 1995 also, the members of the unit, armed with their new skills and expertise, carried their founding band, the Success Stars Pan Sounds, to first place in the Schools Junior Music Festival. This achievement won the band a trip to participate in the Aberdeen Music Festival in Scotland in 1996. In that year too, Success Stars Pan Sounds successfully defended their title as Schools Junior Music Festival Champions.

Lydian Steel then moved on to the big stage at the World Steelband Music Festival 2000. Steelbands from around the world, including participants from the USA, the UK, France and Switzerland as well as from the birthplace of the instrument, Trinidad and Tobago vied for honours at the Jean Pierre Complex in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Lydian Steel’s Ben Jackson conducted TCL Skiffle Bunch, a San Fernando-based steelband whose membership included many Lydian Steel pannists. Their performance of Len “Boogsie” Sharpe’s “In the Rainforest” saw TCL Skiffle Bunch crowned World Steelband Festival Champions.

This year, 2020, is our 25th anniversary. In the midst of the pandemic, we are headlining this Christmas season for Christmas in Chrome, happy to be on Queen’s Hall stage again showing the versatility and talent of the band and also accompanying the choir and wonderful guest artistes. Looking forward to the future, the band hopes to acquire some new instruments and we are also working on plans for a full-fledged Steel concert in 2021. It is expected that Lydian Steel will continue to evolve and take on even more exciting projects as its journey of musical discovery continues. The musically literate pannist will hopefully be the way of the future and we are happy to lead the charge and support the growth and development of our people and our national instrument.

Ben Jackson, 2016 (Updated Astra Noel, 2020)