Congratulations

19th October: Congratulations. To the boys and girls of the NCB Angel Harps, we say "you've done well, you've made us proud, you've shown the world that when it comes to steelband music, we're a force to be reckoned with".

Although not reaching their goal of making it to the Finals of the First World Steelband Music Festival, NCB Angel Harps gave an oustanding account of themselves to place 13th in the semi-finals with a total score of 492.5 points (calypso of choice 261, tune of choice 231.5). The band was particularly impressive with their calypso of choice "pan around the world",  their 261 points placing them 8th in the calypso section. However their main shortcoming was in the tune of choice where they finished 14th for that particular selection.

"This was a tremendous learning experience for us" says manager of the band, Carlyle Roberts, "we left with the full expectation that the road ahead would be a difficult one, and so it turned out to be. But we responded well to that challenge. Under the guidance of James Clarkson, we spent many long hours practicing and rehearsing so that we were able to improve significantly on our performance in the preliminaries when we got into the semi-finals. Our greatest learning experience was discovering what the difference was between being good and being among the best. These lessons can only strengthen our young players for the years ahead".

"We only had six weeks to prepare the band for this competition, six  weeks to get the Test Piece and the Tune of Choice". Considering that we usually prepare for one panorama tune in three months, this was a very short and tight schedule for us. It wasnt easy practicing every day of those six weeks and our young players must be commended for the heart and spirit they showed, never letting the constant grind to dampen their enthusiasm". We also had the misfortune of not having several of our outanding players available for the trip to Port of  Spain due to work and other commitments. So when you take these into consideration, the performance of the band was even more remarkable.

NCB Angel Harps extends our heartiest thanks to the National Commercial Bank of Grenada, Jonas Browne and Hubbards Limited and the Embassy of the Republic of China (Taiwan) for their financial contributions that assisted the band to make this historic journey to the heights of World Steelband Music. We also say thank you to the Commancheros Steel Orchestra for their contribution of two outstanding players and equipment for the trip to Port of Spain.   We do look forward to working with you guys even more in the future.

To David Seales, Gerry Tamar, James Clarkson and Andy Chichester, the Management Team in Trinidad, we say well done. Your job wasnt easy but as usual you rose to the occasion.

The band returns to Grenada on Sunday 22nd October. We will soon be putting up a page in pictures of our time in Trinidad and comments from the players. Stay tuned.