Yuko Asada

Yuko Asada is a steelpan educator whose work spans performing, building, tuning, and transcribing. She holds a Master of Music in steelpan performance, with an emphasis in steelpan construction, and a Performance Certificate from Northern Illinois University (NIU). She was introduced to steelpan building and tuning by Dr. Ellie Mannette at West Virginia University, later trained extensively under Dr. Clifford Alexis at NIU, and studied steelpan performance with Liam Teague.

In 2025, Asada became the first NIU staff member to receive a Fulbright Award. Her fieldwork in Trinidad and Tobago documented master tuner Augustus Peters and other steelpan craftspeople. It produced 23 video interviews with builders, tuners, arrangers, and managers, preserving knowledge passed down largely through oral tradition. In 2026, she received the Arts Midwest Culture Bearers Award.

Asada maintains the steelpans at NIU and teaches the steelpan construction course. She taught the NIU Community School of the Arts (CSA) Steelband for 13 years and has taught at the NIU Percussion Camp since its inception in 2017. Her teaching ranges from elementary school through university, as well as community programs.

Her performance and educational activities span the United States, Trinidad and Tobago, Japan, and Thailand. She has conducted workshops, served as a clinician, and performed internationally, connecting musical traditions across cultures. She has adjudicated steelpan competitions and festivals including the National Junior Panorama in Trinidad and Tobago, the French Panorama, and the Virginia Arts Festival. She has presented at national and international conferences, including the International Conference in Carnival Arts (2025, 2026), the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (2019, 2022), the National Society of Steel Band Educators (NSSBE) Conference (2019, 2020, 2023), and the International Conference and Panorama in Trinidad and Tobago (2015). She has also been featured in the Japanese documentary Gutto Chikyubin (Earth Mail) (2017, 2020) and the documentary Women in Pan (2022) in Trinidad and Tobago.

She is a co-founder of Pastiche Steel Ensemble, Virtual Steelband, and Pan in Unity, initiatives dedicated to advancing steelpan performance, education, and community engagement worldwide. Her extensive transcriptions for steelpan orchestras help preserve and expand the repertoire. Her work has been published in Percussive Notes and Steel Times and by Pan Notation, Maumau Music, and Ramajay Productions.

Mark Brooks

Marc Brooks is a Brooklyn, New York–based steelpan performer, composer, arranger, and educator. He earned an Associate of Arts degree from Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) in 2012 and, in 2021, began formal jazz studies under acclaimed jazz pannist Victor Provost.

Brooks’ musical career spans collaborative performances with local ensembles and leading steel orchestras, including Sonatas Steel Orchestra, Adlib Steel Orchestra, and Pan Alley Steel Orchestra. Since 2007, his compositions and performances have been featured at private events, churches, and steelband competitions throughout the United States and internationally.

His original works, Iron Love (2019) and Wrong Again (2020), were selected for in-depth musical analysis by the New York University (NYU) Steelband program during the 2020 and 2021 academic years. His music was also featured in the Pan in Motion Holiday Special in 2021.

Brooks was recognized as one of the “Three Amigos,” alongside Dr. Kendall Williams and Odie Franklin, whose collaborative arrangements helped the Brooklyn Steel Orchestra earn a fourth-place finish at the 2015 International Conference & Panorama in Trinidad and Tobago. That successful partnership led to a six-year collaboration with San Fernando-based Skiffle Steel Orchestra, where the team contributed to the band’s continued success, including a second-place finish in the Large Conventional Band category at the 2018 National Panorama Finals.

In addition to his work as a performer and arranger, Brooks serves as Assistant Complex Administrator for The Salvation Army. Prior to assuming this role, he served for several years as Music Director, further reflecting his longstanding commitment to leadership, music education, and community service.

Victor Provost

Born and raised on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, Victor Provost is one of the world’s leading voices on the Trinidadian steelpan. Deeply studied in jazz and rooted in the rhythms and aesthetic of the Caribbean, he has drawn praise from the press. The New York Times has called him “a serious jazz improviser,” DownBeat has written, “In the jazz ecosystem… Provost is a rarity,” and Washington City Paper, which named him Jazz Percussionist of the Year six years in a row, said he “deserves to be a jazz star.” The Washington Post praised solos that become “mesmerizing rides that at times swing the listener off into an abyss and then pull him back with a triumphant return home.”

Provost has performed in major venues around the world: Rose Hall at Lincoln Center, the Blue Note, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, and Birdland in New York; Blues Alley in Washington, D.C.; Strathmore in Maryland; Shanghai Concert Hall; and the Royal Opera House Muscat in Oman. His festival appearances span Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean, from Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, and Serbia to Costa Rica, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, St. Thomas, and Barbados.

He has led or been featured on more than 30 albums. His newest release, Wellspring, was recorded with the University of Iowa Steelband. Before it came Island to Island, a joint recording with pianist Alex Brown, and Bright Eyes, which debuted at #5 on the iTunes Top 40 Jazz Charts and was praised by The Washington Post, DownBeat, and JazzTimes. He has performed and recorded with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Paquito D’Rivera, Hugh Masekela, Monty Alexander, Joe Locke, Nicholas Payton, David Sanchez, Etienne Charles, Terell Stafford, Dave Samuels, Steve Nelson, Ron Blake, and Wycliffe Gordon, among others.

An award-winning educator, Provost is on the faculty at Montgomery College, where he directs the World Music Ensemble and coordinates the World Arts Festival. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Music at George Mason University, where he founded the steel pan ensemble. His residencies and master classes have taken him across the United States and the Caribbean, to Berklee College of Music, the University of Iowa, the University of Akron, Miami University, NYU, TTU, and Northern Illinois University. He is an Arts Ambassador to the U.S. Virgin Islands, which honored him with a Special Congressional Recognition in 2014, and he returns often to perform and teach there through Dion Parson’s community-based arts initiative, the United Jazz Foundation.

Dr. Jeannine Remy

Professor Jeannine Remy is a highly acclaimed educator, conductor, composer, scholar, author, steelpan researcher, adjudicator, clinician, media broadcaster, and pan aficionado.  She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northern Illinois University and her doctorate from the University of Arizona with an emphasis in steelpan, percussion, and music theory.  She is the first person to earn a professorship in the Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Trinidad and Tobago.  Her teaching areas include steelpan, percussion, steelpan history and development, steelpan arranging, and composition.  Dr. Lorraine Nero, then Senior Librarian of the Special Collections at the Alma Jordan Library, affectionately dubbed her the “Flag Woman” of steelpan research. 

Professor Remy has arranged and conducted music for several local steel orchestras, including Invaders Steel Orchestra, Hatters Steel Orchestra, and Golden Hands Steel Orchestra.  As the conductor of the Sforzata Steel Orchestra, she became the first female foreign arranger to win a national steelband competition, Pan in the 21st Century.  She is a prolific composer whose countless compositions and arrangements have been performed by the National Steel Symphony Orchestra of Trinidad and Tobago and featured at the Trinidad and Tobago Music Festival.  In the field of music education, her musical works are preeminently featured in the repertoire used by the UWI Pan Exams Board for graded exams, as well as in the Applied and Performance repertoire for Certificate and Degree students in the Musical Arts unit at the DCFA.

In addition to being a Fulbright scholar and receiving multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Professor Remy is the author of the recently published Bands from South and The Saga of Milton Wire Austin and the Fonclaire Steel Orchestra. She is also the co-author of Invaders Steel Orchestra: The History of a Legendary Trinidad Steelband with Ray Funk and of Pan in Education: A History of the Northern Illinois University Steel Band with Andrew Martin and Ray Funk.  She has also written numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on the development of the steelpan and steelpan icons, and received an award from the National Women’s Action Committee for her contributions to national culture.

This Wisconsin native has not only adjudicated steelband festivals in Trinidad and Tobago but has also conducted steelpan workshops internationally across the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. She has also served as a cultural commentator for the National Panorama competition for many years.  Her compositions were showcased internationally at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) Showcase concert, featuring Golden Hands and the UWI Percussion Ensemble performing The Rainmakers in 2008.  Her second PASIC Showcase concert, which premiered virtually in 2024, highlighted a work commissioned by San Jacinto College Central Steel Band entitled Dancing on Steel, performed in Trinidad and Tobago by the UWI Arts Steel and the UWI Festival Arts Dance Ensemble.