The smooth melodies filled the Pavilion Room of The Crane Resort on Saturday night, as returning national, jazz musician extraordinaire Elan Trotman, along with the Elan Trotman Group, entertained the small intimate alcove filled with jazz aficionados.
Trotman said coming home to perform for his friends and family was something special.
“This is like a reunion of sorts,” he said.
Trotman also brought along his band members, all graduates of the Berklee College of Music, and 25 guests who flew down to the island to watch him and the local talent that performed that night.
The international and local guests were not disappointed, as they enjoyed the selections rendered in the first half by the Elan Trotman Group, who were followed in the second half by local performers Wayne Poonka Willock, Mya Daniel, Nicholas Brancker, and the three who developed a friendship with Trotman on Facebook: Ramaro Greaves, Mylon Clarke and Kweku Jelani.
The song set was taken from his debut album Tropicality and his 2014 new album #Liveanduncut.
Elan did a couple of tributes: to Sonny Rawlins and Harry Belafonte, with Don’t Stop The Carnival; a slowed down version of Just The Two Of Us (Ralph MacDonald) with Greaves, Clarke and Jelani, and the four of them were feeling Crop Over 2014 with Leadpipe & Saddis’ Ah Feeling. It was thirsty work for Trotman who kept taking big swigs of water from his bottle.
Jammin never gets old to listen to, not with Brancker plucking those strings and Elan blowing the heck out of that sax. It deserved the standing ovation.
Daniels’ One More Day was specially written for her by Trotman and the end was greeted with loud applause and whistles.
The day previous Trotman held a workshop at the Barbados Community College (BCC) with Roger Gittens, at which he got to hear a lot of the up and coming musicians perform.
“You know there is a lot of talent here and I think BCC has a good jazz programme . . . . They have some Berklee College of Music alumni there running the programme, so they’re in good hands,” he said.
Regarding prospective careers in Barbados for musicians, jazz musicians in particular, Trotman said that the United States market was greater.
“The Caribbean region has certain opportunities like the St Lucia Jazz Festival and Jamaica Jazz & Blues, but the United States and even Europe is a bigger market and much more territory to cover,” said Trotman.
He added, “I think it’s unfortunate that we lost the Barbados Jazz Festival because that’s how I got inspired to play jazz, seeing Grover Washington Jr and all the other artistes playing at Farley Hill every year.
“But it is what it is and I think the economy had an effect on it, so you just have to make the most of it and hopefully through this concert and me being here will help inspire some of the young musicians to keep pushing on, keep growing as musicians and to keep studying their art form.”
