Pauline
Forrest-WatsonForrest-Watson has performed in a number of major operas and festivals, including Porgy and Bess (with the Glynbourne Festival Opera Company), and at the North Carolina Moravian Festival.
Michael Reckord, Contributor
THE SCENE a street in Trench Town, years ago. A man calls to a pretty, teenage girl walking by. She ignores him.
Amused, he calls out: "Do you know who I am?"
"Yes, Bob Marley," she replies and walks on.
The girl was Pauline Forrest (now Forrest-Watson) and she chuckled as she told that story in a recent interview. She had no reason to be awed by Marley, he was only one of a host of musicians living in the area. Also around were Toots and the Maytals, Peter Tosh and Alton Ellis, among others, who were to become internationally known popular musicians.
Forrest-Watson has become an internationally known musician, too, but in a very different music form. She is an opera singer. Born in Trench Town "and proud of it", she was the sixth in a family of nine children. As the family was musical, singing came naturally to young Pauline.
SING EVERYTHING
"I used to sing everything I heard on the radio," she recalls, adding that a favourite singer was gospel diva Mahalia Jackson.
At Denham Town Secondary School, Forrest-Watson came under the influence of an extraordinarily caring teacher of whom she says "aside from my husband, Mrs Brown was the most influential teacher I've had." (One result of Mrs. Brown's teaching was that every student in the class passed the Grade Nine Achievement Test).
Forrest-Watson then moved on to Trench Town Comprehensive High, where she met the other "most influential teacher" in her life, Curtis Watson. He was the music teacher and Forrest-Watson claims the minute he walked into the class she had a 'flash' and thought 'My God, that is my husband!'
She was then 15 years old, but over the next several years her conviction never wavered. However, she kept her feelings to herself and, she says: "I just dreamt about him."
Mr. Watson organised singing competitions and, though she was competing with trained singers while she herself was untrained, so strong was her natural talent that Forrest-Watson won the major competition. As a result, she was invited to become one of Mr. Watson's private studio students.
For a public concert he organised Mr. Watson needed a trained soprano, but was unable to get one. Determined to impress her tutor, Forrest-Watson, then 18 or 19, obtained the cassette of the main concert item, Beethoven's Mount of Olives, and practised the needed soprano role at home.
IMPRESSED
At the next rehearsal, Mr. Watson was indeed impressed and Forrest-Watson got the part. The reviews were good.
Wanting to be a teacher as well as a singer, Forrest-Watson enrolled at Mico Teachers College. Mr Watson was there, too, as a member of staff and Forrest-Watson remembers telling herself "it seems that we are destined to be together."
Her winning streak continued. In the Nathan Brisset music competition at the college, she entered all the categories possible, for alto, mezzo-soprano, soprano and gospel. She placed first in all and got the Nathan Brisset Cup.
Not only a singer, she also took part in sporting activities, especially athletics and netball, and earned herself a nomination for 'Student of the Year 1978'.
Because she earned gold medals and the award for 'Best Gospel Singer' in a Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) competition, she earned a scholarship to the Jamaica School of Music, but after a few months there she asked that the scholarship be transferred to the Curtis Watson Music Studio. From there she did the Royal School of Music examination and earned a Distinction in Singing and a Pass in Aural.
Further studies were on a USSR scholarship at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Russia where, after six years, and work under excellent teachers including Elena Obratsova, the most famous Russian opera singer of the time Forrest-Watson graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree. Her final examination saw her singing the title role in Verdi's Aida.
MAN OF HER DREAMS
By this time she had married the man of her dreams. Curtis Watson, too, had obtained a USSR scholarship and during one holiday period the two got married in London.
Forrest-Watson has performed in a number of major operas and festivals, including Porgy and Bess (with the Glynbourne Festival Opera Company), and at the North Carolina Moravian Festival. In 1978, she was one of the singers on an EMI recording of Porgy and Bess which earned a Grammy nomination. While a student, she sang in the Belvedere International Opera Competition (and got a certificate); she was twice honoured (in 1986 and 2000) for her contribution to music education by Mico College, and in 1995 won the Jamaica Music Industry Award for 'Best Classical Singer (female)'.
TEACHES PRIVATELY
Now a senior lecturer at the Jamaica Sshool of Music (JSM), Forrest-Watson also teaches privately. Her students have been getting good results. Last year, for example, there were several distinctions among the eight JSM students she sent up for the Royal School of Music exams. In her community, along with two other volunteers, she teaches Maths, English and Music to a group of 17 persons.
Forrest-Watson and her husband have two sons, Michael and Dike. Both are musical, she says, suggesting that the tradition of music in the family may continue for yet another generation.
FOR THE RECORD: Adziko Simba, who was featured last Sunday in this series on Performing Arts personalities, was one of three founders of the Plenty Plenty Yac Ya Ya group in Montserrat. The others were Chadd Cumberbatch and Yvonne Weekes.
