When steel pan virtuoso Andy Narell arrived in Paris in 2001 the last thing he expected to find was a great steelband – or an opportunity to make the first steelband recording that fully captures the thrilling audio experience of standing smack dab in the middle of a huge, roaring steel orchestra.

Narell is probably best known to American audiences as a musician who pioneered the role of the pan in contemporary music. He's also a star performer with legions of fans scattered from New York City to Soweto and all points in between. Narell has made 14 albums. He's recorded and/or performed with Marcus Miller, Chucho Valdes, Bela Fleck, and many, many others. And in 1999, as the first non-Trinidadian ever to arrange for the legendary Panorama competition, he led Skiffle Bunch to the finals and rocked the steelband world with his original composition “Coffee Street.” It became an instant classic.

Narell is also a studio ace, a brilliant audio technician who's intimately involved in recording, mixing and mastering his own CDs. It's no accident that many audiophiles use Narell's recordings to demonstrate how good their systems sound.

All of Narell's talents come together in The Passage, a recording featuring Narell, the steelband Calypsociation, and three of the greatest soloists in jazz – Michael Brecker, Paquito D'Rivera and Hugh Masekela. The Passage was recorded and mixed using cutting-edge technology to capture all the excitement of the steelband sound, and is being released in two formats: a great-sounding CD, and a 5.1 surround-sound SACD that will put listeners right in the middle of the band!

The story of The Passage starts in two places at the same time: Paris, France, and Port of Spain, Trinidad. The Parisian plot starts when Narell arrived in Paris to discover the existence of Calypsociation.

“I came over here to teach in the spring of 2001,” Narell recalls. "I had sent over the chart of ‘Coffee Street,’ and they played part of it for me – and I could hear after two minutes that I wanted to work with this band."

The fit between Narell and Calypsociation was so tight that the band commissioned him to direct, compose and arrange two ten-minute pieces for the second European Steelband Festival in 2002. That music sounded so sweet, and the experience was so rewarding on all sides, that Narell continued working with Calypsociation – a collaboration that's documented on this CD. We'll return to Paris in a moment, after a short dissertation on steel pan acoustics.

In the 63 years since the steel pan was invented in Trinidad, it has become a symbol of politics, religion, class-struggle, and a sweet fire in the soul all rolled into one. Every year, just before Carnival, the entire country locks in on the widely popular national pan competition known as Panorama. The top steelbands swell to 100 or more players beating close to 300 pans, and heavyweight composer-arrangers like Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, Ray Holman, and Clive Bradley create ten-minute musical extravaganzas for the occasion.

The thundering, percussive, polyrhythmic roar of these huge bands – each with its pounding bass pans and jazzy melodies moving from section to section – is so exciting it can make you weak in the knees. It's also almost impossible to record.

In live performance, human ears can decode the subtleties of the music, thanks to the spatial spread and depth of a big steel orchestra. And to make the experience even more exhilarating, many panyard listeners actually walk inside the band, finding space to stand between the sections. Unless you've personally plunged into the center of a steelband in full flight, you have never heard the music the way it really sounds. Until now.

Narell has been aware of this for years, and he realized that this recording provided the perfect opportunity to try something revolutionary. "Due to technical issues,” he explains, “steelband recordings tend to be one-dimensional sounding. It’s very hard to capture the power of the bass, the spatial relationships of the sections, and the clarity of all the inner parts. So even digital recordings tend to sound small and tinny compared with the massive power of the real thing. For this recording, we placed the microphones all around the band to capture the excitement of 30 people playing together in a large studio space. Then we overdubbed each of the eight sections of the band on top of the live performance to get a clean stereo pair of each section for presence, balance, and effect sends. This way I’ve got the elements I need to create a mix that puts you right there in front of the band.”

That's just the stereo mix. The 5.1 surround sound SACD will be ground-breaking in more ways than one. Obviously, this is the first steelband record to be released in surround, but Narell has gone a great deal farther. “Since surround sound is such a new format, everybody is experimenting and there are very few established conventions. So rather than take the stereo mix and just add a few things to the back for interest, which is what a lot of surround mixers do, I decided to use the technology to put the listener right into the center of a steelband. It’s a thrilling audio experience.”

Electronics aside, The Passage is ultimately about music, and the music is anything but ordinary. For starters, Narell brings a totally unique viewpoint to steelband music: His music is informed by a lifetime of experience in jazz, world music, and the recording studio. To take things to yet another level, he invited three jazz masters to sit in – Michael Brecker, Paquito D’Rivera and Hugh Masekela.

“A lot of jazz musicians don’t take steelband music seriously,” says Narell. “So it was important to me that the soloists should not only be great players, but that they would approach this music with respect, and come to the session with the anticipation that they were about to play with a tight, swinging big band – which is what Calypsociation is. Mike, Paquito and Hugh exceeded my expectations, which were very high. They add a whole new dimension to the record. They play so beautifully, and the sound of their instruments soloing in front of a steelband is a totally exciting experience for me.”

"The Passage," which opens the record, is a steelband tour de force. Commissioned by Calypsociation for the 2002 European Steelband Festival, Narell has used the form and structure of a Panorama arrangement to create a stunning composition.

"Song For Mia" is a biguine – an irresistible rhythm from the French Caribbean. Narell solos briefly, then Michael Brecker steps up for a brilliant tenor sax solo.

"The Long Way Back" uses the baiao, a samba rhythm from the north of Brazil, and it merges the batucada percussion of Brazil with the steelband. Check out Narell's breathtaking solo.

"Sea of Stories" is a Narell favorite, an Afro-Cuban-sounding composition that he's recorded twice before. This is the expanded version with a whole new third movement that Calypsociation premiered at the European Steelband Festival in 2002.

"Mabouya" is based on a 3/4 rhythm from the French Caribbean known as mazooka. The song is a petit hommage to Thelonious Monk, as its harmonic structure and form is based on "'Round Midnight." Paquito D'Rivera solos on this one, and tears it up.

"Dee Mwa Wee" is a driving 12/8 African groove featuring Hugh Masekela on flugelhorn, and a battery of hand drummers. Narell has been a huge fan of Masekela's ever since he was a kid growing up in New York. "I’ve always loved his music, and he’s one of my personal heroes," says Narell, "an artist who committed his life to the struggle for freedom."

"Coffee Street" was originally composed for the 1999 Panorama in Trinidad, and as you might expect, it's a totally thrilling ride.

At the end of the day, The Passage is three-ways amazing: It captures some of Narell's most compelling compositions, played by a fabulous steelband. It depth-charges those performances by adding jazz solo voices. And it drops the listener right in the middle of all this incredible music, thanks to Narell's remarkable use of the latest audio technology.

"It’s not every day you get a world class orchestra to rehearse for two years to make a record,” says Narell. “I could have spent a few thousand dollars, and a few days, to record the band, but I decided to make the most of this opportunity. We put hundreds of hours of work into recording and mixing this disc. Frankly, I'm trying to redefine the art of the steelband recording.”