I was born a long time ago in the middle of this century. My family consists of my wife Sirpa, my daughter Hanna and my son Janne. Actually I am a teacher of wood work and metal work, but I have been working on music all my life. In my youth I spent a lof of time on making loudspeaker systems, guitarFX, guitars, and basses, Leslie speakers, etc. I also played double bass in Lohjan Yhteislyseo Philhamonics (a school orchestra), some cello, and flute, and studied some music theory. Progressive rock, and playing and arranging dancing music also included in my youth (no bassist jokes, please, guess why).

I play a lot of instruments and have been building many kinds of drums (bombos, bongos, timbales, congas, toms, cowbells, chimes, etc), electric guitars and basses, Charango-guitars, balafons, kalimbas, and traditional Finnish folk music instruments. TAKE A LOOK!
Now my main interest in on MAKING AND TUNING PANS!

I have been working as a music teacher of Karjaan Ylaaste since 1977 with lots of musical productions. In 1985 I had a weird kantele group playing ancient Finnish reggae music. Kantele is the Finnish national instrument, a little box with five strings. We were on a tour in Sweden, and that is where I heard a Danish Tornby Steel Band playing. I was very impressed, and wanted to try to build a pan, thinking like any jerk that it would be as easy as making a trumpet from a piece of brass pipe. I made some efforts right away but after getting some photocopies of Seegerīs book concerning pan making from Esa Tervala in 1991 something started to happen.

The famous Finnish composer-musician Henrik Otto Donner told me about a steel band in Sweden. So I sailed to Sweden to see and hear Hot Pans. Ulf Kronman had just finished his book Steel Pan Tuning, and after a week in Denmark watching the Pan Virtuoso Rudy Smith making and tuning pans I was ready to start to learn to make and tune pans with trial-and-error method. First experiments on playing pans in my school happened in 1991, but Steel Pan Lovers, the leading Finnish steelband started in 1992.

I have developed my tuning skills by hard work and lately made big steps with help from Chris Wabich, LA California, a real panman: excellent panmaker, tuner, player, improviser, arranger and musician.

If you want to start a steel band ask me for instruments and assistance.

I have always wanted to find my own style, not forgetting humor in music. Now I am leading some school steelbands, I have almost 100 steel band arrangements on standard notation, and even more head arrangements on all kinds of music.

My top group consisting of my favourite players STEEL PAN LOVERS did well in the First European Steelpan Festival in Paris in May (3rd) achieving a change to take part in the first World Steel Band Music Festival in Trinidad & Tobago in October. We reached the finals and became 8th best band in the world. Meanwhile we did a 16 part TV-show as a houseband shooting not less than 87 pieces of music on video in eight days. This meant a lot of arranging to me!

To my big surprise I was granted the Finland State Award of Promoting Childrenīs Culture in November. I got it for bringing "the crazy idea of playing pan" into Finnish schools.

My friends made my 50th anniversary a great happening, so year 2000 was really THE year to remember

In my classroom as a normal setup you will find