How wonderful! A tuner in Switzerland! Esa has been living in Switzerland since 1995, he is a steelpan soloist, player, teacher and arranger. It was in 1982 in Sweden when he discovered pan. Playing in diverse bands he for the first time saw a steelpan, a double second. He was fascinated! How did he become a tuner? The original idea was to build a cheap instrument for himself. Being an autodidact, he studied a lot of books and experimented for many years including exchanging ideas and experiences with other tuners, mainly Dudley Dickson. This way he developed and refined continuously his tuning skills.

Meanwhile Esa tunes and blends around 500 pans a year under the label “E.T. PANWORKS” (He recommends to tune the pan yearly).

Together with Dudley he is the inventor of the pyramid pans. Esa is member of the musical advisory board of PANCH, he contributed essentially to the PANCH 2000 project and played himself with PANCH 2000 in Paris and Trinidad.

We honor him with this prize because we are proud and grateful to have a tuner like him in Switzerland, because it was always important to him to do excellent quality work and because he shaped significantly the steelpan culture in Switzerland, as tuner, as inventor of the pyramid pan and with a lot of other good things he does, e.g. as performance artist or PANCH teacher for sticking techniques. Dear Esa, congratulations!