All Star Tribute to Ralph MacDonald – a concert review¹

On a picturesque plateau above Arima overlooking the distant Caroni plains, the Holy Cross College Alumni produced a jazz event for the ages—Jazz on D Hill—featuring an All Star Tribute to Ralph MacDonald on Mother’s Day, May 11. The music of the late Trini-by-blood musician, composer and producer resonated in the night as some of the best and most famous musicians in jazz covered the songs spanning MacDonald’s solo career from the 1970s to his untimely death in 2011 and beyond.

Led by trumpeter, Etienne Charles, this aggregation of superstars of jazz included multiple Grammy award winner Marcus Miller on bass guitar, Buddy Williams, one of the most recorded drummers of all time, pannist extraordinaire Robert Greenidge along with other MacDonald album alumnae, vocalists Nadirah Shakoor and Dennis Collins, Barbadian stars Arturo Tappin on tenor saxophone and Nicholas Branker on keyboards, and Charles’ Creole Soul band mates Alex Wintz and Kris Bowers on guitar and keyboards respectively.

The most significant inclusion in this All Star grouping was Gary Fritz, MacDonald’s cousin who had the joyous responsibility of recreating the percussion parts that audiences have grown accustomed to over the years from MacDonald. The classic “Jam on the Groove” has a percussion break that utilized toy hammers that exemplified how the mundane can become extraordinary in the hands of a master. For the disco hit, “Calypso Breakdown,” MacDonald’s son Atiba joined the All Stars to play the iron and enhance the “engine room” to joyous ovation. At that point the rains came down, but the magic lingered.