Stewart out for Panorama 3-peat in 2020
DUVONE STEWART, who has led the BPTT Renegades Steel Orchestra to back-to-back national Panorama titles in 2018 and 2019, is looking forward to 2020, and going after the three-peat in Panorama wins.
He said: “It’s on the top of the agenda for Duvone Stewart....I know it is going to be an uphill task, but I am humble and focused. And I’m going to leave it in God’s hands. I have a good band, a good complement of players, a good staff that I work with in Renegades, a good sponsor to support me and I am going to give my all in trying to see if we can repeat as Panorama champions, 2020.
"Whatever God has planned for me, I will accept. If I’m not successful at it I’m not going to take it as a loss, but rather as God’s work. When He says yes, nobody can say no. But if it does happen I’m going to be really thanking and praising Him for blessing me with a great gift.”
Stewart is also very focused on selling pan to the world big time.
“If I am that new face I will work with the likes of other young arrangers like Seion Gomez, Arddin Herbert, Leon Foster, Stephon West, Dr Mia Gormandy, Keisha Codrington and others from the new breed of arrangers to come together and sell the national instrument globally.
“We need to respect, love and embrace our own, because steelpan belongs to TT but there are countries outside of TT that respect pan more than locals.”
Questioned about his extensive travel this year, Stewart said it is a part of his career which started in 2002, with an invitation from Mokhtar El-Mokhtari, head of the University of Nantes, France who wanted steelband and Sterwart’s master classes at the university and El-Mokhtari’s band Calyps’ Atlantik.
Stewart said his Panorama successes were like an advertisement for foreign work.
“I have been very determined, very, very persistent in making and creating the brand Duvone Stewart to become the face of the instrument where I can become the flagship of the new generation that goes forward with instruments, and then on the educational side, where I could go about teaching, doing master classes and lectures and workshops."
He's been to France, Germany, London, US, Caribbean islands, Maldives, Japan.
This year so far, he said, "just sent a bigger buzz to the steelpan community, internationally, having been successful in winning in three categories. But a whole heap of colleges from the US have been calling me, stemming back from the arrangement of Year For Love I did in 2018. It was a very phenomenal arrangement.
By Joan Rampersad
Trinidad and Tobago Newsday Newspapers
