By Cayman Compass contributor Christopher Tobutt.
Music at the Library unfolded on 26 March with the kind of clarity only solo performance can offer. Without the shelter of an ensemble, each musician stood alone, every note and phrase exposed, every intention unmistakable.
That openness created a rare kind of electricity. Emotion arrived direct, unfiltered and deeply human. These were the Rising Stars of CayMusicA, a new generation of exceptional young performers shaping Cayman’s cultural landscape, and seeing such confidence and expertise in each of them is a clear testament to the programme’s transformational power.
The evening began with Justin Sy performing Chick Corea’s ‘Spain’, a work built on quicksilver changes of mood. Sy moved with ease between reflective stillness and sharp, rhythmic bursts that carried a quiet boldness. One moment the piano hovered in a soft, searching whisper; the next it snapped into crisp, assertive motion. The contrasts were striking – contemplation giving way to fire, delicacy to drive – a portrait of Spain’s beautiful, complicated soul.
Cellist Jude Solomon followed, a young multiinstrumentalist with a natural instinct for emotional structure. Bach’s Sarabande in C major held a dignified melancholy — sadness shaped by restraint rather than surrender.
Solomon treated it as a conversation between the cello’s deep resonance and its higher, pleading voice, a dialogue between endurance and vulnerability. Then he launched into Aaron Minsky’s Trucking Through the South: ragtime swagger, bluesy nods, a rhythmic strut out of the 1920s. Dark yet joyful, playful yet grounded.
Violinist Hannah Anthony’s Hungarian Dance flickered with joy threaded through with something older — a brightness edged with longing. She followed with August Nöick’s Étude Op. 196 No. 5, revealing a different facet: disciplined, crystalline, precise. Together, her pieces traced a full emotional arc, from exuberance to introspection, all delivered with the honesty that only a soloist can summon.
Flutist Charlotte Gothar — already an instructor in the Starlight programme — entered with a sound that seemed to float rather than begin. Her Mozart Andante in C carried a luminous purity; a tone that fills a room without ever pressing on it. When violinist Thian Bodden joined her for Pachelbel’s Canon in D, the atmosphere shifted again. Their lines intertwined in gentle counterpoint, sometimes conversation, sometimes perfect unity — two voices weaving a single, shimmering thread.
Pianist Alexa Valencia offered a journey within the journey. Karma pulsed with cinematic tension; Clair de Lune softened the room into moonlit stillness; Struttin’ at the Waldorf snapped everything back into jazzy confidence. Alexa moved through these contrasting worlds with fearless emotional agility.
The night closed with Johann Uy, whose pairing of Chopin’s Grand Valse Brillante and Liszt’s Liebesträume brought the programme to a romantic, glowing finish. His playing carried both sparkle and yearning, a final reminder of how much depth these young musicians already command.
An emerging painter, Deandre Scott was invited onstage by CayMusicA’s Artistic Director, to exhibit some of his paintings. Deandre is also a musician, a guitarist who writes his own songs, and it was good to see how CayMusicA celebrates young artists who are creating outside the world of classical music.
What emerged over the course of the evening was a glimpse of Cayman’s cultural future — one shaped by young artists who play not from the surface, but from a place of sincerity and courage. Their music felt vividly, urgently alive.
Christopher Tobutt is a freelance journalist who has written for various publications in the Cayman Islands since 2003.
Related Videos
