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St.
John’s, Antigua & Barbuda, W.I.
- Five of Antigua & Barbuda’s
best known steel orchestras each
take their place in the
spotlight on Thursday July 29 as
they vie for championship honors
in the annual steel band music
panorama competition. The
event unfolds at ‘Carnival City’
at Antigua’s Recreation Grounds
in the country’s capital, St.
John’s.
 The 2009 Panorama champions,
Hell’s Gate
(pictured right), return to the
competition with their winning
arranger of last year, the
talented Khan Cordice (youngest
arranger to take a steel
orchestra to a national panorama
championship in the country),
who has been studying at the St.
Augustine, Trinidad campus of
the University of the West
Indies (UWI) for the past year.
Cordice has also tasted victory
as arranger for
Antigua & Barbuda’s
National Youth Pan Orchestra
in the
2008 Moods of Pan 25-a-side
competition. Hell’s Gate will defend their
title from a field of the same
four steel orchestras of last
year: Ebonites, Gemonites,
Harmonites and Halcyon.
Hell’s Gate has copped the most
Panorama championship titles in
Antigua & Barbuda - fourteen in
all, including their last four
in 2002, 2006, 2007 and 2009.
Not far behind is Halcyon Steel
Orchestra with ten national
steelband panorama
championships, their most recent time
in winner’s circle being 2008.
Harmonites celebrated their
panorama wins eight times since
1968, with their last title won
in 2004. Gemonites Steel
Orchestra, formed in 1978 from
their school steel orchestra
(P.M.S. [Princess Margaret
Secondary School] Serenaders)
are three-time national panorama
champions, with 1981, 2003 and
2005 being their years of
triumph. Ebonites were
panorama champions back in 1977.
After the results were
announced, last year’s
winning prize trophy was
presented by Antigua & Barbuda’s
Prime Minister, the Honorable
Winston Baldwin Spencer.
The Prime Minister is himself a
pan man, and was once
an active member of Halcyon
Steel Orchestra, and also its
one-time manager.
Order
of appearance of the bands,
arrangers, and
their selections are as follows:-
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