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October 15th, 2000: The Test piece has been dropped for the Semi-Finals and Finals of the World Steelband Music Festival. At a meeting of the World Festival Committee yesterday in Port Of Spain, it was decided that at the Semi finals, bands will only have to play their "piece of choice" and their "Calypso of choice". The test piece was omitted in order to save time at the shows. Previous shows ended in the early hours of the morning and with eight bands scheduled to appear in each of the semi finals on Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th, it is believed that this could have been a turn off to the audience.

This new turn in developments could easily give NCB Angel Harps the break they need to go all the way into the Finals. With only six weeks to prepare, the band struggled with the test piece in the Preliminaries but nonetheless gave an impressive performance on the strength of the tune of choice "Fiesta Paso Doble" and their calypso of choice "Pan Around the World".

Their Calypso piece, so far has been the outstanding calypso arrangement in the competition and should they heed the judges advice from the preliminaries, they could well be a handful come Finals night.

The band welcomed the news with joy. Now they can focus on polishing off their two tunes. Look out Trinidad. Look out World. We're coming.