Hague jazzes with the Jamaica Big Band at Heritage Feast on the Devon House East Lawn. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer IN AN attempt to bring Devon House closer to its former opulence, the Devon House Development Company Limited, held Heritage Feast, a night of silver platter service. Heritage Feast whispered of the days when Devon House was a part of what was once known as Millionare's Corner.
The ice cream haven, Devon House, is all that is left of those days of opulence now. Millionare's Corner was made up of a property where Abbey Court now resides, and the old Young Men's Christian Association building was the third house.
Although not only millionare's were present at Heritage Feast, the $6,000 per plate, silver service event was not quite designed for those with shallow pockets.
The development company is attempting to raise funds as a part of the move to allow Devon House to boldly stride through the 21st Century leading heritage tourism in Kingston. The development company has made an agreement with the Institute of Jamaica to host exhibitions at the house. A few of the downstairs rooms were converted into a temporary museum where artwork from artists such as Cecil Cooper, Christopher Gonzales, Stanford Watson and Susan Alexander were on sale.
For the event a huge white tent, swathed in gold spangled white or black cloths covered the east lawn, beckoning to the who's who of the glitterati to come and dine in fine style.
MEAL
The seven-course meal was provided by a host of chefs largely from some of Kingston's more popular restaurants. Jamaica Inn's Kai Bechinger created the appetiser and the Courtleigh Hotel's Ivan Silk created the soup dish. The entree came via The Guilt Trip's Colin Hylton, Norma's on the Terrace's Norma Shirley and Rib Cage's Gary Ferguson.
Along with the food, a feast of music was also provided. The duo Warm and Easy helped to wash down the evening's fare with easy grooving classic tunes taking from adult contemporary and reggae. Later on Sonny Bradshaw led the Jamaica Big Band along their well travelled path of great Jazz.
However, the Jamaica Big Band did not start playing until just after 11 p.m., quite late for a Thursday evening dinner. As a result, at the end of the official part of the evening, approximately half of the diners left, and the rest slowly trickled out. Fortunately this did not dampen the usual high quality of the Jamaica Big Band's performance.
As the National Anthem had already been played (sadly not the Big Band's reggae interpretation of it) the band forwent their usual beginning and opened up with their personal anthem The A-Train. From there they boogied unto Satin Dolls before taking a skank over to Ruccumbine and Confuscious.
