Antigua Day 5 & 6
Day 5 & 6 in Antigua
Over day 5 & 6, our team pushed the boundaries of our projects. Branching off into three separate groups, they covered a huge array of music and incredibly wide area of the islands.
Group one continued to work with the Teachers’ CPD, diving deeper into musical composition. During a relaxed morning, the rest of the team explored much of the island of Antigua, visited a local recording studio and made it to St John’s to wander round the old city. Following their wanderings, the second group continued with the ABYSO rehearsals. Working on sounds, colours and technique.
Starting with something completely new, the third group – Daniel Swanni, Emily Abbott, and Peter Banks – embarked on a different path, braving a very early wake-up call to board a boat – renowned for being rather rough – bound for the island of Barbuda. Their mission? To mentor a group of budding recorder players and to cultivate a new crop of violin and cello teachers.
Daniel was delighted to work with the recorder group, which had just embarked on their journey into playing the recorder together. Developing skills through games he carefully built their confidence and created new music for them to perform together. Over just one and a half days, he prepared them for their upcoming Sunday concert.
Emily and Peter, meanwhile, met with aspiring violin and cello teachers. They brough the first ever violins and a cello to the island. Their task was to lay the groundwork for a new string teaching programme on the island. It was a real pleasure to hand over the instruments to the new teachers and the energy in the room was extraordinary.
The potential for these teachers to bring music to Barbuda opens up a wealth of possibilities for the people. Increasing musical prosperity of an area has the potential to improve academic results, increase emotional awareness and build a quality of life. The enthusiasm of everyone involved was extraordinary and we were all humbled by the visit.
Staying overnight on Barbuda, we were treated to exquisite local cuisine and breathtaking views of the beaches. The highlight was a visit to the frigate bird colony.
We spent just a short amount of time on the Island of Barbuda, yet we feel we have made friends for life and seen the start of something really special. This moment in our lives will be something we remember forever. What stood out the most for all of us was the local enthusiasm for music.
Day 10 was filled to bursting with composition, composition, and… composition. Throughout the previous 9 days, several members of the ABYSO had sent their compositions to Alison, Ka Youn, and myself, to be played in Monday’s composer’s concert. As a result, the proposed concert programme gradually expanded throughout the week, inflating from a 40-minute concert to an hour, then an hour twenty, and so on. By the time Monday rolled around, we had a program of 14 pieces, highlighting the fantastic diversity of musical creativity on the island.
In addition to the individual compositions, the composer’s concert also featured the collaborative compositions developed throughout the trip by the composition team and the various instrumental sections of the ABYSO. There was the violinist’s piece, a string quintet, which I was frantically sewing together as late as Monday morning (a timeline I’m sure every composer is familiar with). The quintet featured melodies and accompaniments from ABYSO violinists Asafa, Alfranique, Asha, and Calynia, all massively varied in character. Tying all these fragments together resulted in a wonderfully diverse musical collage, continually moving between driving grooves and floating lullabies. While I was wrestling with this, Ka Youn was doing something similar for the lower strings, tying together their beautiful melodies into a virtuosic duet for viola and double bass. What struck us both more than anything else was the incredible creativity of the ABYSO student’s musical fragments: They would often embrace quirkiness, would never shy away from subverting harmonic and melodic expectations, making each note on the page very much their own.
What followed was one of the best concerts of my life. Education officer Caryl Edwards-Lewis compered, cultivating a wonderfully Antiguan atmosphere of audience participation and engagement, sprinkling the perfect combination of humour, encouragement, and storytelling across the evening. Sitting front row was His Excellency Sir Rodney Williams and Her Excellency Karen-Mae Hill, two people who have provided invaluable help in facilitating the development of orchestral music on Antigua and Barbuda. Many of the members of the ABYSO presented their own pieces, preparing speeches that detailed the hard work and creativity of the previous week’s workshops, with each speech being met by a mandatory stretch of thundering applause and deafening whoops from parents and peers. Witnessing students, teachers, and parents lift each other up and recognise each other’s deep dedication to music-making was a truly special experience. The student’s pieces were awe-inspiring, testaments to their musical curiosity and willingness to collaborate creatively with one another. We heard film music, string music, wind music, quartets, quintets, duets, large ensembles, jazz ensembles and more, a musical kaleidoscope that represented the individual compositional talent of every single member of the ABYSO. Really special stuff.
