Zanda live at APA

PRODUCTION One Ltd will launch a series of concerts produced in collaboration with the University of Trinidad and Tobago’s Academy for the Performing Arts (UTT-APA) (Napa). The first concert titled Clive Zanda is here...Live! will feature pioneering kaisojazz composer and recording artist, Clive “Zanda” Alexander on September 30 from 6 pm at Theatre 1 of UTT-APA at Keate Street, Port of Spain.

This concert will also celebrate the re-release of his seminal album Clive Zanda Is Here! With Dat Kinda Ting: Calypsojazz Innovations to music lovers around the world.

Zanda will perform all nine songs on the album — including favourites like Fancy Sailor, Ogun and Chip Down — along with other career originals. A new generation of musicians will join Zanda in the jazz trio aggregation.

As the elder statesman in the jazz fraternity in the Caribbean, and as he approaches his 80th birthday, Zanda’s commitment to performing this music has not waned, and this concert will expose a new audience to continuing exercises in improvisation first captured on this album, said a media release. It is also an opportunity to see him live in this setting as he rarely performs with a grand piano, UTT-APA having a prized Bösendorfer Grand.

That album, recorded at KH Studios in Port of Spain with Michael “Toby” Tobas (drums) and Michael Georges (bass) as a trio and originally released in 1975 stands as an important landmark in the evolution of jazz in Trinidad and Tobago, the release said. Only 350 copies of the record were pressed, which makes it one of the most sought-after records from the Caribbean from that period today. Its re-release by German reissue speciality label, Cree Records, celebrates the music and the musician whose international career as performer, composer and recording artist spans more than 50 years. It also marks a return to the idea that TT’s music has a place in the international music industry. With new distribution and manufacture being handled by the label, the album — remastered and released as a vinyl LP, and including a new liner note essay by local music writer Nigel A Campbell — has the possibility of reaching a new global audience.

Zanda’s innovations towards a fusion of jazz with native calypso and extempo resulted in the album being the “proof of concept” of the work he and others like the late Scofield Pilgrim, Barbados-born Queen’s Royal College teacher and indigenous jazz music advocate, were doing in the 1960s to create new sounds in the recently independent nation, and to codify the new music that was beginning to shape a generation of young jazz musicians. Kaisojazz — calypso jazz for the modern nativist musician — was a new expression of pan-African Caribbean heritage. (Calypso and jazz, as musics from the Americas, were influencing each other for decades before, but kaisojazz was a determinedly modern Trinidad expression.)

Production One Ltd said it sees this collaboration with the UTT-APA “as pointing the way forward to celebrating the best of our own. UTT’s primary focus is on developing Trinidad and Tobago across a full spectrum of educational opportunities. The APA trains and mentors the entertainment industry professionals of tomorrow by making high-quality performance their business today. With this in mind, the concert featuring a pioneer musician is apropos to the university’s mandate, and importantly cements the reputations of the two organisations have in saluting excellence and creating new experiences that uplift.”

For more info: https://zanda.eventbrite.com