Pan Player, Arranger
Today, I wish to salute a young musician of outstanding class in the person of Chantal Esdelle. From an early age, Chantal showed the discipline which lends to excellence and the versatility which ensures success.
Despite the fact that she achieved good academic results, especially at her school Bishop Anstey, her life has always been filled with music.
In 1987 she copped the Dr John Boodoosingh trophy for the under 12 piano solo of the Trinidad and Tobago National Music Festival.
In 1992 she was the Joint National Champion Pan Soloist with Liam Teague at Pan is Beautiful VI at the National Steelband Music Festival. At the same competition she was the first female and youngest competitor ever to win this award.
1993 saw her continuing her winning ways musically when she won the Trinidad Music Association Championship Trophy Piano Solo 16-19 years of age; the French Trophy for the most promising performer, at the Open Soprano Award (North) and the Geddes Grant-Huggins National Youth Award for excellence in Music.
Chantal's tutor in piano and pan is Louise McIntosh, the founder of the Pan Piper School of Music. In singing; Chantal is the protégé of Joslynne Sealey.
But Chantal has also performed to a great extent with the pan. She was the pan soloist for the launching of Wilfred Catey Reading Whisper from the Caribbean.
She could have been found in 1992 in he front-line tenors for Panorama in the bands Birdsong, Tropical Angel Harps and Pandemonium.
In 1993 she could have been found in Exodus among the tenors as the band played Pelham Goddard - Desmond Waithe's arrangement of Dust in Yuh Face.
On the final night of Panorama 1994 she could have been found in the tenors in Desperadoes and on the quadrophonic for Tropical Angel Harps.
- Chairperson for the Organising Committee for the first National Youth Rally on Pan Steelband Week 1993.
- Author and presenter of the Paper on New Art Forms and their contribution to Caribbean cultural in France on the steelband at Carifesta V Youth Symposium.
- Youth and cultural delegate at the Anglican World-wide Conference in Bahia, Brazil, [representing] the Anglican Congress of the West Indies.
Chantal at present [1996] is on a musical scholarship which was awarded to her by Berkley College, USA, where she is majoring in arranging; with her instruments being piano, keyboard and pan.
Chantal Esdelle a pannist and musician of today, yesterday and tomorrow.
© 1997 Gideon Maxime: Pg 193; PAN THROUGH THE YEARS (1952 - 1996)
