The Paul Gibbons Scholarship Night 2007 attracted a wealth of talent from the music fraternity at the Bermuda Folk Club.

The night was in honour of the long-time supporter, member and past president of the club. Proceeds from the evening went towards the Paul Gibbons Scholarship Fund, which provides an annual commitment to local students dedicated to studying music.

The award last year was donated to Olivia Onyia, a brilliant and dedicated young piano student at the Bermuda School of Music.

Gibbons, former lead guitarist of the new defunct rock/reggae band Last Rights, had made a lasting impression on those around him, even during his stint as club president.

Lead singer for Last Rights, Owen Burgess, introduced Chris Broadhurst as the opening performer. Coincidentally, Broadhurst and Gibbons were schoolmates and, according to Broadhurst, "Paul was the biggest Beatles fan I've ever met in my life. In fact, I have a newspaper clipping here of Paul and I winning a Beatles competition in December 1995."

Broadhurst opened with his set with the Beatles classic We Can Work It Out. In typical Broadhurst humour, he introduced his next song, Brown's Blues. His song received 2,167 hits on YouTube (click here to listen), which was a musical coup for this son of the soil.

His next offering was a country song, which he had performed at the club back in February 1985. He ended his song with an easy rock tune before teaming up with Rob Woodley. Woodley's proficiency on the mandolin was flawless as he and Broadhurst performed an instrumental folk tune.

The first female performer for the evening, club president Val Sherwood, rattled off a trio of original tunes, the first entitled The Whole World. Songwriter Gone was penned in Belize. This tune is an easy, laid-back song which leaves you humming the melody long after the song has finished!

The duo of Jym Brier and Katherine Watts made a fine showing. Brier is an accomplished keyboardist and Watts has been an active supporter of previous Gibbons Scholarship nights since its inception.

Watts gave a good performance in spite of the year-long gap since her last appearance. At the end of Watts' set, Brier's wife May made her club debut with a poem entitled I Will Remember You. She also performed an a cappella rendition of her song There Must Be More To Life Than This.

Woodley made a second appearance for the evening and showed his humorous side while playing the guitar. Woodley is an equally talented guitarist and vocalist as he performed a brief set including Wine Song, which always has audiences in stitches.

Mike Cacy gave a solo performance before teaming up with Jackie Ayres to perform Mystified. This was Ayres' second performance of the song at the club, having debuted the song at last year's Scholarship Night when last Rights backed her.

This year she opted for the acoustic version and showed her musical prowess on the flute. After her gig with Cacy, she and her band, Raising Caine, gave an emotionally charged, four-song set including her break-out hit Red Hot.

It was barely a year ago that Ayres debuted Red Hot when the club was based at the Old Colony Club and Last Rights was the backing band. In 2003 she and Gibbons worked on the song and, according to Ayres, one can hear Gibbons and she decided to bring his influence to the front with a new version of the song.

With a hand-picked group of seasoned veterans, Raising Caine features Dennis Eldridge, formerly of Last Rights, Otis (Khadijo) Gibbs, who is the band director and keyboardist, and Allan Perry, former drummer of the Derelicts. Newest member of Raising Caine is bassist Andy Brown, who recently joined the band.

The next duo to grace the stage was the a cappella duo of Dawn Zuill and Katherine Watts. They opened with Bette Midler's The Rose followed by Closer To Fine, followed by a few more cover tunes.

The final act for the evening was a reincarnation of sorts. Owen Burgess shared a story of how Gibbons extended an invitation to perform with him at Harbour Nights and asked Burgess what they should call themselves to which he replied: "Out Of The Blue. "

In a one-night-only gig, a reincarnated Out Of The Blue Band featured Allan Perry on drums, Tommy Smith on bass, Jym Brier on keyboards, Dennis Eldridge on lead guitar/vocals, Mike Keats on rhythm guitar and Burgess on vocals.

After opening with Elton John's Rocket Man the band rattled off a string of cover tunes and even Eldridge found himself pressed into service on lead vocals for a couple of tunes.

Affectionately known as The All Star PG Tribute Jam Band, they brought the near four-hour show to a rousing finish. The club's next show will be in January.