Mark Loquan as he appeared in a short film by Walt Lovelace called ‘Pan Is,’ commissioned by NGC for the 2023 Trinidad and Tobago Energy Conference. Image courtesy Lovelace and used with permission.

Mark Loquan, a distinguished chemical engineer and celebrated composer who effortlessly moved between Trinidad and Tobago's corporate and creative worlds – and often made them seamlessly intertwine for the greater national good – passed away on April 6, at the age of 63, from brain cancer.

His career in the local energy industry began in 1982, when he took up the position of process engineer at Trinidad Nitrogen Co. Ltd. Twenty years later, he became the first local president of Yara Trinidad Ltd. His portfolio within the company expanded after he was appointed president of Yara International's Upstream Business Development for Angola/Sub-Saharan Africa, and later CEO of Yara Pilbara, which required a move to Australia. He eventually returned to Trinidad, accepting the position of president of The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (NGC) in September 2016.

Loquan restructured the company, streamlined its processes, and expanded its portfolio, brokering partnerships with countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, as well as China. He was a huge proponent of collaboration within the local industry to improve efficiency, and in 2019, he was made a director on the NGC board. He served on the boards of other petrochemical companies and the Energy Chamber of Trinidad and Tobago, was part of the government's Standing Committee on Energy, and helped NGC strive towards sustainability initiatives. He eventually resigned from NGC in August 2024 following news of his diagnosis.

Loquan's world was bigger than the scope of his career, though. Under his leadership, NGC contributed significantly to the nation's cultural landscape, perhaps most notably as a title sponsor of the Bocas Lit Fest, which is now well regarded as the premier regional literary festival. Upon learning of his passing, the festival took to Facebook, where it called him a “patriot, and a genuine friend of the festival.” Festival founder Marina Salandy-Brown added:

Mark Loquan was a rare human being — an exceptional person, yet grounded, kind and generous. He made being gifted and good seem ordinary. He was a visionary who understood how our economic, social and cultural efforts are linked, and as President of NGC he supported the development of the Bocas Lit Fest and encouraged investment in the development of our literary sector. When, in 2022, Bocas hosted its first literary festival in London to showcase our star-quality young and new Caribbean writers to the world, Mark broke his journey en route to an energy meeting in the Middle East to check on us at the British Library and cheer us on. That is not sponsorship, it is partnership, and looking after the country's investment in its talent.

Describing himself as having “a multifaceted mind,” Loquan was a musician and composer who had a special passion for the steelpan, Trinidad and Tobago's national instrument. For well over a quarter century, he composed soca songs – working with musical artists like Denyse Plummer, who helped give him his start – as well as pieces for Trinidad and Tobago Carnival's famous annual Panorama competition.

Within the last decade of his life, Loquan formalised his interest in pan through other avenues, as he realised the importance of archiving both the instrument's music and its stories. In that vein, he, along with Mia Gormandy-Benjamin, herself a noted pannist, composer and arranger, and Akua Leith, former conductor and artistic director of the National Steel Symphony Orchestra, started PanNotation, a website designed to facilitate “the purchasing of steelpan music scores and the acquisition of educational materials.”

Loquan had a vision of PanNotation — part online store, part library — being a platform for the global steelpan community, a space for composers and arrangers to earn revenue from the sale of their musical creations, and to allow steelpan educators access to academic publications and other useful information. The site also worked in conjunction with the Copyright Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (COTT) to try and make it easier for arrangers to get permissions from composers “to aid in the legal sale of arrangements.” On Loquan's passing, Gormany-Benjamin reaffirmed her commitment to “working diligently to keep his legacy alive.”

In partnership with photographer Maria Nunes, Loquan also ventured into filmmaking, executive producing films under the umbrella of “A Better Tomorrow,” a series that explores people's steelpan experiences.

Nunes said on Facebook, “Words feel pale this morning to try to express what is in my heart and mind in the face of all that Mark Loquan went through ever since his world turned upside down in February last year when out of the blue he began experiencing the first signs of what was soon diagnosed as glioblastoma, the most severe type of brain cancer”:

Mark faced his trials with such calm and grace and though we are overcome now with the terrible sadness of loss, our tear-filled eyes are buoyed somehow by the bright bright light of his life, a light that will never be dimmed. Mark’s contribution to the world of steelpan is enormous. His actions were consequential in ways that will impact for generations.

He saw the endless possibilities of our beloved national instrument and over the last 25 years he enjoined numerous people here at home, and internationally, to work with him to realise his rock solid vision of where we should be headed. The extent of what his legacy in steelpan really and truly is needs to be unpacked and deeply contemplated, and then acted upon, so that the work he so generously dedicated himself can come into its fullness and live on.

In recognition of his service to culture, Loquan was presented with the Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (ORTT), the country's highest award, in 2024.

Other social media users remembered the myriad ways in which Loquan gave back to his country. Gillian Bishop, sister of the late musicologist Pat Bishop, recalled his establishment of the Music Literacy Trust, “established with support from the companies in which he served as a brilliant engineer,” and the ways in which “he was able to leverage this passion.”

Cultural activist and steelpan aficionado Tillah Willah, who saw him as “a panman in every sense of that term,” noted, “In a country where philanthropy is almost an F word, Mark talked and walked the talk”:

We often hear that the corporate world is at odds with the creative world. That those who are successful in business let their creative sides die. That the creatives are parasitic and beggy beggy and the corporates are culturally illiterate and self-serving. And then comes a man like Mark Loquan who breaks all those moulds. Who was the top industrialist who also did not stifle his artistic passions. Who knew that there were/are stories that simply must be urgently told about who we are.

Other online tributes, including from the prime minister, remembered Loquan in superlatives that could never “truly do justice to someone whose very existence was larger than life,” including calling him a giant who “reminded us that powerful change often comes through quiet conviction.”

Loquan is survived by his wife, Pat, and their son, Evan.