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Ray Holman goes north to Alaska
Ray Funk for T&T Express, Wednesday, April 30th 2008
Like a bright ray of sunshine, Ray Holman came to
Fairbanks, Alaska and led five local steel bands through
a memorable program of his compositions that drew a
standing ovation from a large and very appreciative
audience. As he arrived, the weather broke and the snow
started to melt. As he rehearsed the various groups who
would be performing, and despite fears it would be a
chilly reception in such a cold place, he found everyone
very cheerful and friendly, hungry to hear pan.
A mainstay in promoting the development of pan around
the United States, Holman has been performing and
teaching from one end of the United States to the other.
But this latest trip took him from Arizona to two states
he had never previously been, the 50th and 49th, Hawaii
and Alaska. Hawaii's Brigham Young University provided
him with tropical beaches and eager students. But Alaska
offered five separate steelbands, all ready to perform
his tunes in a place with a layer of snow lingering from
a long winter that had arrived in October and never left.
Throughout the winter, Christopher Lubken, band and
steelband teacher at West Valley High School, and
instructor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, had
been drilling the bands on Holman tunes in order to take
the greatest advantage of Holman's stay.
Lubken also leads Pantheon, the small pan side that
performs in everything from restaurants to hockey games.
This band plays year-round, saving all its gig money to
send all five members to the Festival of Steel that
Ellie Mannette leads in Morgantown, West Virginia every
summer. For the past several years Christopher Lubken
and Pantheon met Holman each summer in Morgantown, where
he is one of the distinguished faculty. Lubken fell in
love with the Holman compositions that they learned each
summer and started talking to Holman about making the
journey to the Frozen North. After a couple years of
planning and ongoing discussions, it was a combination
of fitting it into Holman's busy schedule, as well as
the right set of grants, that finally allowed the visit
to be realized.
Pan didn't exist in Fairbanks until a decade ago when
the University of Alaska Fairbanks Music Department
purchased a set of five instruments and Jo Scott, who
runs the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, started working
to develop a summer program with leading American panist
Tom Miller. It was Miller, another of Mannette's faculty
each summer, who started encouraging Lubken and other
pan enthusiasts to go to Morgantown so that now an
annual contingent from Alaska attends. Meanwhile, Lubken,
who had no experience with pan before coming to Alaska,
worked hard to get the Rasmuson Foundation to provide
the funding for the instruments at the high school. The
West Valley Steel Drum Band program has grown and is the
largest of three high school steelband programs in
Alaska. Last year, the advanced steelband at West Valley
won honors at the finals of the state school music
festival, not to mention a thunderous ovation, for their
performance of Mark Loquan's "The Challenge is Minor".
They are planning on attending the state music festival
again this year and will be playing Holman's "Dancing on
a Wave".
Beyond these five groups, Fairbanks also has an
outstanding community steelband, Cold Steel, which
hosted a reception for Ray Holman on his last evening in
Alaska. Musical director Mason Damrau, pan and pan
record collector extraordinaire, brought out a
beautifully preserved old Mannette styled tenor pan from
the fifties. Ray Holman was thrilled and amazed to see
such an instrument anywhere, much less in the wilds of
Alaska. He kept everyone mesmerized with renditions of
the songs he played as a teenager in Invaders' yard,
getting the Alaskans to join him in singing Blakie's
"Steelband Clash" and Cristo's "Frozen Chicken" and
"Miss Universe", as well as Merchant's "Pan in Danger".
A highlight of both the concert and the party the next
night was a new composition that Ray Holman composed
only a few weeks ago, "That I Believe", a message of
peace and unity in a time of turmoil that struck a chord
with all who heard it. Everyone at the reception sang
along at his request as he ended a wonderful set of
solos, along with a few duets with Chris Lubken.
While in many ways pan may be in danger, masters like
Ray Holman are spreading the joy of pan all over the
world, even to the Frozen North! |
