1. Landing

After a handful of adventures that delayed my arrival to the Island, I finally got to know the tiny airplane that would take me to Montserrat. After fitting in the 7 passengers on the aircraft, the pilot started yelling the emergency landing procedures that were barely heard due to the deafening noise coming out of the engine – then we were finally ready to take off.

While leaving Antigua (a slightly bigger island where long-haul flights connect to), it was hard not to be amazed by the crystal blue that was being revealed some meters below. About 15 minutes later, a green mountain started looming on the horizon - luckily that was where we were heading to. Down there the landing strip looked ridiculously short and narrow and for some seconds one would doubt if the pilot would be able to land on the right place. A few minutes later there was a sigh of relief coming from a couple of passengers and our feet were safely on the ground.

Montserrat is beautiful. Its mountains are covered by a lush green jungle forest, the houses are painted with lively colours and while going up and down the hilly roads it’s difficult to lose sight of the calm blue sea that rests in the horizon.

Despite being in the Caribbean sea, Montserrat is lucky enough to not fit in that touristic resort filled island stereotype we are used to. This is mainly due both to the Hurricane Hugo (1989) and the volcanic eruption (in the late 90’s) that devastated the capital city and made two thirds of its population to leave the island.

Nowadays, with a population of 5000, Montserrat is very similar to a village and people are genuinely very friendly and in love with their “Emerald Isle of the Caribbean” – and they should so. Its hidden black sand beaches are gorgeous (and deserted most of the times), its wildlife surprises us in every corner and there’s a very strong community feeling that is spread out by the only Radio station that tells you everything that is happening. While tuned on the calypso music and driving on the main road that crosses the island, car horns are constantly honking as a way of greeting the passing friends – in fact, people generally know everyone’s plates and phone numbers by heart. These are a just a few things that make Montserrat an easy place to get familiarised with.

I was quite lucky with the week I arrived here, because there was a reasonable famous punk-rock singer, John Otway, recording his new album in some improvised studios at Olveston House (that was owned by Sir George Martin). Adding to the recording team, there was a bunch of fans coming all the way from England to follow their idol and a filming crew documenting the whole process. Apart from several events dedicated to welcome Otway’s crew (including a reception evening at the Governor’s house), there was a recording session with the local choirs that I got asked to lead, so that they could record some melodies for the new album. Despite being my first meeting with the choirs (and ending up leading the group of fans who were also being recorded) the whole team was very pleased with the successful session.

In the meantime Miguel has arrived to the island. We’ve known each other for a decade and have been doing quite a lot of projects together, especially short films and community performative projects. Miguel is a filmmaker but as he also plays some instruments we will be co-leading the projects and he'll be documenting parts of the process with the groups, hopefully to culminate in a sort of documentary that reveals a bit of what we’ll be doing around here.

While we are both settling in the island and getting used to the culture and the humid weather, we’ve been meeting all the people we will be working with, trying to chase people up to get things ready to start. For the past week we’ve been visiting every school to promote the projects for this year and sorting out the logistics of each group. It has been a slower process than I’d imagine but we’re finally kicking off all the projects this coming week!

Here is a list of the projects we’ll have for now:

National Youth Choir – divided by three sections: children, teens and adults
Strummin’ Strat Ukulele Club – for primary school students
Re-Beat – recycled percussion band with secondary school students
Pulse – a band formed by teenagers keen on songwriting and performing

All these projects were created by the previous music leaders – Rebecca Chalmers and Cris van Beuren – who did a great job in setting up these groups and creating various concerts and productions over the last 4 years. My decision for now was to continue with all the projects from last year, aiming to explore different repertoire and creating more collaborations inter-groups - and bit by bit understanding how I could expand to other projects. I’m already having quite a lot of ideas for things I want to do, but before I get too excited, I want to get to know the groups and see what actually makes sense to create with them.

Hopefully the next weeks will give us even more exciting ideas!