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Trinidad & Tobago renames its premier performance auditorium after trailblazing pianist Winifred Atwell

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Globalvoices.org 

Internationally, she was a household name, but Atwell was less well known in her own country

Originally published on Global Voices

Autographed image of Trinbagonian pianist Winifred Atwell via hat-archive on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Envisaged as Trinidad and Tobago's first national concert hall — one worthy of shining a spotlight on the country's vast repository of talent — Queen's Hall was finally completed in 1959 after almost a decade of cultural advocacy. Located just north of the Queen's Park Savannah in the capital, Port of Spain, it was named after the then-reigning British monarch. Now, 65 years after Queen's Hall first opened its doors, its auditorium has been renamed in honour of the wondrous Winifred Atwell, the Trinbagonian pianist whose talent took the world by storm in the 1950s.

The change was celebrated in a formal ceremony and concert on September 23, the day before the country's Republic Day holiday. At a time when many Caribbean nations have been reassessing the ways in which the narrative of their shared colonial past continues to be upheld through statuary and other symbols, the decision to rename the beloved performance space for a native daughter has been well received.

Born in the town of Tunapuna along Trinidad's east-west corridor, Atwell learned to play classical piano from a young age and quickly gained popularity. She was often invited to play at charity events; once, while entertaining the American servicemen stationed at an Air Force base at Piarco during the war, someone challenged her to play in the boogie-woogie style that was all the rage in the United States. She went away and wrote what would become known as “Five Finger Boogie.”

Although her parents — a chemist and a nurse — assumed Atwell would put her pharmacy degree to good use, she went to New York to study piano technique with the esteemed Russian-American classical pianist Alexander Borovsky. In 1946, she arrived in Britain to study at the Royal Academy of Music and pursue her dream of becoming a concert pianist.

In the evenings, she would play concert halls and clubs to help earn income; it was on this circuit that she met Lew Levisohn, who would become her husband and manager. He encouraged her to play ragtime music; she was so exceptional at it that after a 1948 concert at the London Casino, her star was on the rise, thanks as much to her warmth and style as to her technical proficiency:

In 1951, she signed a recording contract with Decca. The following year, she was part of the lineup for the first Royal Variety Performance for the newly installed Queen Elizabeth II. She played an original piece she had written for the occasion, “Britannia Rag,” which went on to reach Number Five in the UK pop charts. Her records brought much-needed cheer to the post-war era, and in 1954, her tune “Let's Have Another Party” gave her the distinction of being the first Black recording artist to reach Number One in Britain.

Atwell would have many more hits, including “Poor People of Paris,” which made it to Number One in Britain in 1956. As the 20th century came to a close, she was arguably the most successful female instrumentalist to have ranked in the British pop charts, including recordings of classical music, which remained close to her heart. Atwell became a household name, as well regarded as The Beatles and a regular guest on many of the popular variety shows of the day:

She continued to break boundaries, becoming the first Black artist to sell a million records and the first woman ever to perform at the site of the Sydney Opera House. Decked out in a hard hat and wearing her joyful, signature smile, she serenaded the construction workers by playing “Waltzing Matilda” for them in 1964:

She and her husband would go on to make Australia their home, where she would work to improve Aboriginal rights. Atwell died on February 27, 1983.

Despite her amazing life and career, Atwell's name has stayed somewhat in the side notes of musical history. At the renaming ceremony, her great niece Helen compared her to a piano that “lay unnoticed, unrecognised,” but which “graced the greatest stages in the world.”

Prime Minister Keith Rowley, who noted that Atwell was appreciated in the UK long before she was in the land of her birth, urged citizens to celebrate their own: “From Trinidad, [Atwell] was not acknowledged, but in England, you get to the top because you're good. But something happens to us in Trinidad and Tobago — we're not good until somebody else [says] we're good.”

The “somebody else” that directed Trinbagonians’ attention to Atwell turned out to be musical icon Elton John, who appeared in a video testimonial played at the renaming ceremony. Crediting her with giving him “the momentum to become who I am,” John said the turning point for him as a young pianist was seeing Atwell on television: “She could do classical things, she could do great boogie-woogie stuff … I was entranced by her. […] She was literally my first idol as a piano player, and it’s never left me, really. She’s always in my heart.”

While John's heartfelt tribute was widely appreciated, it also fuelled the conversation around the lack of recognition Atwell received in Trinidad and Tobago. Despite being given a national award in 1969 for her achievements in music, she was not widely known by successive generations of her compatriots.

On Facebook, Jonathan Ali shared: “‘Someone always have to tell us about us’ – a friend’s comment on the video of Elton John’s tribute to the late, acclaimed Trinidad and Tobago pianist Winifred Atwell, following the renaming of Queen’s Hall [Auditorium] in her honour, going viral.” He also remarked upon the irony of “at least one newspaper’s reporting of John telling us about us [having] his photo, but not Atwell’s.”

Referring to Atwell as “not just any pianist,” Queen's Hall lauded the fact that she collaborated with the Pan Am Jet North Stars Steel Orchestra to produce “Ivory and Steel,” the first album that blended the music of the piano and the steelpan, Trinidad and Tobago's indigenous instrument. Naming the auditorium after her, it said, “solidifies her place in our cultural landscape [and] is a reminder to all that greatness can come from our shores, and that the legacy of Winifred Atwell will forever be a part of our artistic story.”

Pianist and pannist Chantal Esdelle, who performed at the celebration and who, like Atwell, is classically trained, told Global Voices, “She was a phenomenal pianist who, because of her planning drive and focus, was able to record and sell albums worldwide, achieve number one status, host a television programme. With all her fame, she never forgot home and revered us by the significant act of working with PanAm North Stars to create ‘Ivory and Steel.'”

Even though Esdelle never met Atwell, she feels a special connection to her because Pan Pipers, the music school she attended as a child, was located at WinVilla, Atwell's home in St. Augustine, Trinidad — a space “in which many solid young pianists were [trained] and also where pan was taught to a group that performed many classical works.”

Others who did know of Atwell could not have been more pleased to be part of the occasion:

As Esdelle puts it, “Her legacy was and is a light.”

Written by Janine Mendes-Franco