On the tropical Caribbean island of Trinidad, 4,300 miles from Edmonds, revelers this week celebrate that raucous festival called Carnival.
The two-day, island-wide party will feature elaborate costumes, frenetic dancing and, perhaps in 2010, steel pan music written and composed here — in sleepy little Edmonds.
The man responsible, a wiry and energetic 48-year-old steel pannist named Gary Gibson, knows his instrument of choice is a strange one, especially for an area like this, where people know it better as “steel drums.”
“This is not like being a featured violinist in the Seattle Symphony. Not in this neck of the woods,” Gibson said from the basement studio in his home in Edmonds’ Maplewood neighborhood. “Seattle is definitely not a steel drum mecca.”
Gibson, though, could be seen as something of a steel pan prophet.
This month, he was awarded first place in two out of three categories in the first-ever international Symphony &Steel Composition Contest sponsored by Trinidad’s Music Literacy Trust, the University of the West Indies, and a Trinidadian corporation.
The awards come with nearly $10,000.
Gibson’s original work, “Caprice (A Curious Preoccupation with Three Short Themes),” took first place in the overture category, and his arrangement of Lord Kitchener’s “Rainorama” won the calypso category. Both pieces feature a full orchestra, and eight steel pannists.
In Trinidad, steel pan music is taken seriously.
The National Sinfonia of Trinidad, the country’s national orchestra, will premier both of Gibson’s pieces in August with help from the West Indies Festival Steel Orchestra.
It’s only a matter of time before the music makes it big time here, too, said Gibson, who believes he is one of only five or six full-time professional steel pannists in the United States.
“It is definitely ready to be taken seriously,” he said. “Now that tuning techniques have been perfected, the tone and pitch match up against any other instrument in the symphony orchestra. Its inclusion in the orchestra is a natural progression. The potential expansion of the orchestral sonic palette with the addition of the steel pan is vast.”
His lofty speech belies his past as a music professor at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts.
He’s no longer teaching. Instead, he plays casual parties and jazz gigs with his steel pan groups Panduo and Yahboy!, travels across the country performing concerts and workshops on college campuses, and helps create film scores for movies large — “Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind,” “The Hills Have Eyes” — and small.
In 2004, he because became a Trinidadian national champion, winning the legendary Panorama Steelband National Championship as a member of the 120-player-strong Exodus Steel Orchestra.
Here, of course, there isn’t much recognition for any of that.
It’s both a blessing and a curse, he said.
“The blessing is that you’re doing something wonderful and its a nice niche,” Gibson said. “The curse is that it’s definitely a niche.”
Reporter Chris Fyall: 425-673-6525 or cfyall@heraldnet.com
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