[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith its return to genuine jazz music, the Saint Lucia Jazz Festival will this year feature four of the most prolific and creative Saint Lucian jazz musicians. With Luther Francois, Barbara Cadet, Denys Baptiste and Ronald ‘Boo’ Hinkson on its line-up, the festival pays tribute to outstanding Saint Lucian musicians and to their role in creating and promoting Caribbean and Creole Jazz.
On Monday May 7 the festival will kick off with an entirely Saint Lucian line-up featuring Barbara Cadet and Denys Baptiste. Accomplished musician, vocalist, arranger and composer, Barbara Cadet is also a musical director and producer. She is the co-founder/arranger of the 40-piece Allegro Steelpan—all female band—which performed and competed in Saint Lucia’s National Panorama competitions and other main stage events.
Barbara was also the producer and musical arranger of the group Sisterhood which consisted of nine female vocalists who performed during Saint Lucia Jazz and a number of other events around the Caribbean.
Born in London of Saint Lucian parents in 1969, award-winning composer and performer Denys Baptiste first studied music at school from the age of 13 and in 1992 he continued his music education at London’s Guildhall School of Music, studying under former Jazz Messenger, Jean Toussaint.
Denys has had an impressive career both as a soloist and as a bandleader, with a most distinctive and immediately recognisable sound. He has played and recorded with some of the biggest names in jazz and other genres including McCoy Tyner, Ernest Ranglin, Courtney Pine, and Manu Dibango.
2018 has already been a fabulous year for Baptiste, who has been nominated for the JAZZ FM Awards in two categories: under Album of the Year with his latest project, ‘The Late Trane’, a CD that revisits some of John Coltrane’s late compositions, rearranging and presenting them in exciting new forms, and for Live Experience of the Year for his 2017 concert with Pharaoh Sanders.
On Thursday May 10 the headliner act at Sandals Grande near Pigeon Island will be one of the most widely known and respected Jazz composers, performers and educators in the Caribbean. For a concert that will also feature London-based Dominican guitarist Cameron Pierre, Saint Lucia’s Luther Francois will present another original project called “Fragments”, with musicians from Saint Lucia, Martinique, Guadeloupe and the UK.
This concert will be, in many ways, a tribute to Luther Francois’ role in support of the jazz festival over the years. Indeed, in 1991, years before the start of the Saint Lucia Jazz Festival, he gave the Creole jazz world one of its greatest annual events, as he was a driving force behind the founding of the October Jazz Festival.
Luther has recently begun presenting extracts from a body of work that continues to expand. He lives in Martinique where he continues to make a valuable contribution to the evolution of music in the region through teaching, composing and performing.
“I have done a lot of work with other people’s music, and now I want to focus more on my own works, because I am also a composer and an arranger,” says Francois. “And I am a demanding composer. My music is not easy to play; it is like classical compositions and, to get into that music, you have to practice and practice, and practice more.”
The contribution of Saint Lucian jazz artists will climax on Sunday May 13 for the special Mothers’ Day concert at Pigeon Island, with Ronald ‘Boo’ Hinkson joining Martinican Frantz Laurac, American Soul singer, songwriter and pianist Avery*Sunshine and Jazz SuperGroup R+R = NOW led by legendary pianist Robert Glasper.
This show will provide local music icon ‘Boo’ Hinkson with another opportunity to showcase some of the best musical talent emerging from Saint Lucia at this time. Throughout his career, Hinkson has spent time and energy encouraging and supporting young musicians, and this concert will be another way for the Saint Lucian public to pay tribute to his role as a teacher, mentor, performer, producer and composer.
