By Cayman Compass contributor Christopher Tobutt

If the piano and cello recital at John Gray Memorial Church on 9 Sept. – the opening event of CayMusicA’s 2026/27 performance season – is a forebearer of concerts to come, then music lovers are in for a treat.

Featuring CayMusicA’s founder and artistic director, Glen Inanga, on piano and the organisation’s most accomplished alumni, 23-year-old Dequan Smith McConvey, on cello, the recital wasn’t one of student and mentor, but one of two world-class musicians performing together.

The first note Smith McConvey played wasn’t loud, but it carried a depth that settled instantly into the space. It felt almost like the beginning of a walk – a step into the evening’s sound world. Inanga’s reply shaped the direction, inviting the cello to speak more boldly.

Robert Schumann’s “Five Pieces in Folk Style” unfolded like glimpses of shifting emotion – warmth, hesitation, a sudden bright turn, a shadow passing through. One movement felt slower and reflective; another carried a kind of happiness with an undercurrent of sadness, the piano and cello briefly following the same melody before breaking away from each other.

Inanga’s arpeggios had that bubbling clarity of water moving over stones, while the cello ran ahead with a sense of dawn-light freedom, darkening into a yearning phrase before suddenly asserting itself. By the final movement, the cello was moving through its full range, flurries of notes giving way to calmer lines, and the room had taken on a charged stillness, as if everyone had been drawn into Schumann’s private world.

Igor Stravinsky’s composition changed the mood: “The Suite Italienne” arrived with crisp edges and quick turns – modern and strident yet rooted in the Baroque re-imagining that inspired it. The cello often held tension on a high note while the piano resolved it with undulating melodies and sympathetic chords, the two instruments briefly lost in conversation before coming together in a moment of bold and strident unity.

Then the music struck out – momentarily angry – with strong and masterful fingers plucking notes – a dazzling interplay between piano and cello in a wild and intricate dance. When the bow returned, it brought harmonies full of colour and incidentals that weren’t dissonant so much as boldly shaded, giving the music grandeur without heaviness.

César Franck‘s “Cello Sonata in A Major” brought a different kind of intensity. The opening felt like a small flame lit in a quiet room – vulnerable yet determined. The music built gradually, carrying the emotional weight of the wedding gift it originally was, rising through dramatic, strident, sad, assertive and even defiant moments. And yet the final movement resolved everything not with triumph but with sheer, unfiltered joy.

For those who have watched Smith McConvey grow from a talented teenager into a young artist studying in Scotland, this recital felt like a clear step forward. His playing has gained depth and courage, and, paired with Inanga’s seasoned musicianship, the evening became a story told in sound – full of contrast, tension and those moments where happiness and sadness sit side by side in the same phrase. More than anything else, he was able to bring us all, whatever our musical ability, on that journey with him.

Christopher Tobutt is a freelance journalist who has written for various publications in the Cayman Islands since 2003.