Found at: http://www.anguillaguide.com/article/articleprint/5395/-1/134/
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Jazz Festival Featuring Anguillian Students
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This year the Concert Band of the Music Department of the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School is a special feature in the Anguilla Tranquillity Jazz Festival which runs from Thursday November 8 to Sunday November 11.
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The Concert Band of the ALHCS playing jazz
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The students performed on the grounds of the Social Security Office on Friday evening, November 2, their first public appearance in the run-up to the actual commencement of the festival.
“This is a result of the Jazz Band Camp over the summer,” Music Teacher Lennox Vanterpool told The Anguillian just before the start of the function led by him and his colleague, Kimba Southwell.
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L-R: Lennox Vanterpool, Derek Lewis of BET and Fitzroy Tomlinson
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“Coming out of that camp, is the desire on the part of the organisers, the Tourist Board and BET, to involve the youth as an educational component to the Jazz Festival. A number of the students who were involved in the Band Camp are part of the Concert Band anyway, so we have put together some jazz music coming out of the summer camp and are going to be quite involved in the Jazz Festival.”
Asked how the students were catching on to jazz, Mr. Vanterpool replied: “They are very excited about it and the upbeat tempo…They could go quite far because once you get them interested in it, and they start to listen and practice more, they will become more proficient as musicians totally. It does not have to be specifically jazz but once we get them into music, then they could play whatever style they wish. I am really interested in making musicians and then they could choose whatever path they want to travel after that.”
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Mr. Timothy Hodge
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Festivals Coordinator, Fitzroy Tomlinson, was asked to comment on the involvement of the students in jazz. “It is the future. I think that is the most I can say about it,” he responded. “What I have seen at the summer camp made me realise that this is the future. Lennox Vanterpool and Kimba Carty have a concept and what we are doing is helping to fuel what they see as something they want to improve upon… and I think that’s the future.”
The Social Security Board is one of the leading sponsors of the Jazz Festival and the Director of Social Security, Timothy Hodge, had this to say: “We are very happy to be associated with this wonderful way to start the Jazz Festival this year. We are particularly pleased because we have the young people whom we sponsored in a summer programme with the Anguilla Music Teachers’ Association and they are now showing us what they have learnt. It really makes us proud to be associated with this exercise.
“This is the 25th Anniversary of Social Security serving Anguilla and we are about caring for the entire population. Social Security cannot exist in a vacuum. It makes no sense for those of us who are getting a salary or a pension to be well taken care of and others are not. We exist for the wellbeing of all of us. In the words of a letter, so well put by Kafi Gumbs, which I was very pleasantly surprised to read in The Anguillian, [we are] ‘improving the quality of life for all.’ That includes our young people and we must pay particular attention to them because they are the ones who, with all our societal problems, we need to concentrate on.
“We are showcasing our youth, supporting their development so we are very happy to have this jazz presentation by them as the very first act of the Jazz Festival. We are also supporting the festival in its economic sense for jump-starting the tourist season. Tourism is our major industry and that is where we get our contributions. This is something we have thought out and we are very happy to be associated with jazz in Anguilla.”
In addition to the Jazz Festival, Social Security is also supporting music development generally in Anguilla.