Steel Pan Lovers started as a school steelband in 1991 in Karjaa, a little town in Southern Finland c.a. 80 km:s
from Helsinki to the west. Nowadays most of the players are making their studies in various towns all around
Finland. In spite of that the beat goes on, and we try to play as much as possible.
Do you want to hear a wavclip of TOBAGO JAM?
More pictures of Steel Pan Lovers
The King of Percussion, the Great
Airto Moreira himself
has given a comment of our band as follows:
Airto Moreira
Kajaani April 23th 1998
"Today I was surprised to see, and feel the incredible energy
of the band "Steel Pan Lovers". It is a band of intenational appeal and should be heard all over the world.
Congratulations for the great sound and tastefull repertoire."
Read more about this (in Finnish only so far)
Steel Pan Lovers, players 2002:
TENOR PANS and DOUBLE TENOR Tommi Knaapinen
TENOR PANS Joonas Saikkonen
Mark Loquan
Teemu Mäenpää
Emilia Mäkinen
Anna Koponen
Hanna Viitanen
Ida Jyrkkänen
DOUBLE TENOR PANS Sini Salminen
Liisa Virtanen
DOUBLE SECOND PANS Päivi Kärkkäinen
Sami Tammi
Terhi Tammi
DOUBLE GUITAR PANS Saara Vuorensola
Taru Åkerfelt
Tiina Putkinen
TRIPLE CELLO PANS Salla Virman
Emilia Jyrkkänen
TENOR BASS PANS Damir Korkiakoski
SIX BASS PANS Rasmus Pailos
Janne Viitanen
DRUMS Ville Väätainen
CONGAS, PERCUSSION Marko Jokela
TIMBALES, PERCUSSION Riku Rajamaa
PERCUSSION Jani Paananen
LEADER, ARRANGER, TUNER Ari Viitanen
The mean age of the players is 18,5 years.
Steel Pan Lovers has performed on the most important Festivals of Finland like Kaustinen Folk Music Festival,
Pori Jazz, Kainuu Jazz Spring, Hankasalmi Skiffle Festival, Faces-ethnofestival, and many, many more.
Concert tours have also been made to
Switzerland, Sweden, France, Trinidad and Estonia. (Check the latest news for future performances).
The first Steel Pan Lovers-CD was released 1994 being the first-ever CD-recording of a Scandinavian steel band.
The second CD: FIRE was released 1996 and the third came out on November 25th -98.
More about the CD´s on discograpy page
Our musical style is to have no style at all, and we are painlessly
bouncing from one style of music to another. This makes us able to play all kind of music from classical
masterpieces like Finlandia through jazz to Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix, TV-themes, not forgetting original
Finnish-Trinidadian socas and calypsos. A list of our present repertoire and
a list of some other arrangements by Ari Viitanen can be checked.
16-part TV-show on National TV2 starts 29.08.2000 SPL being the houseband. Mr. Markus Kajo is presenting his "Handbook of the Human Being"- a humorous approach to the subject of being a human being.
Steel Pan Lovers is the 3rd best band in Europe and 8th best band in the world
according to the First European Steelband Festival in Paris in May 200 and
World Steel Band Music Festival 2000, held in Trinidad&Tobago 9-22.10.2000!
Right now Steel Pan Lovers is getting ready for Angostura European Steelband Festival in May 24-26 in Sète in France.
Steel Pan Lovers uses instruments mostly built and tuned by Ari Viitanen. We have some instruments by Trinimasters like Desmond "Mappo" Richardson and Roland Harrigin.
Contacts: pan-ari@dlc.fi
Snail Mail: Steel Pan Lovers, Pitkämäenkatu 9 D, 10300 KARJAA, FINLAND