Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

Wade "Big Tri­ni" Austin was born in­to pan. The nephew of NL­CB Fon­claire's man­ag­er and cap­tain Mil­ton "Wire" Austin, he learnt to play at the age of three and by 11 was a sec­tion leader in the band. But while he con­sid­ered pan his life, Austin was en­cour­aged to re­gard it on­ly as a hob­by and find a more se­cure skill from which to make a liv­ing. In 1994, at the age of 20, he mi­grat­ed to Eng­land and, dis­re­gard­ing the ad­vice of his rel­a­tives, in­clud­ing his un­cle, ded­i­cat­ed his en­tire ca­reer to the in­stru­ment. "I was for­tu­nate. I got in­to teach­ing, which wasn't hard for me 'cause I was ac­cus­tomed teach­ing pan. From a young age, I was a sec­tion leader. I was in charge of the tenor bass sec­tion at 11. At 13, I went on to the four-pan sec­tion and when we went in­to schools, I was al­ways one of the main peo­ple in the pot to put that to­geth­er," he said, via Skype, from his home in Waltham Abbey.

"My wife's dad, Ray­mond Joseph, who passed away be­fore I mi­grat­ed, was a school pan mu­si­cian and when I came up here and I was try­ing to get my­self sort­ed, I was told to teach pan in schools. So I went in­to that field and did that for eight years, work­ing for var­i­ous coun­cils." Austin is very pas­sion­ate about teach­ing pan to young peo­ple and it's that pas­sion that has in­spired his lat­est al­bum, Pan in Mo­tion, Pop/R&B/Rock Vol­ume 1. On the al­bum, Austin shows the ver­sa­til­i­ty and melod­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties of the pan as he cov­ers well-known pop, R&B and rock songs, such as Maxwell's Lost With­out You, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers' Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion, NeYo's Miss In­de­pen­dent and Michael Jack­son's Earth Song.

"I've been here for more than 15 years and the pan scene is start­ing to dwin­dle; pan is still con­sid­ered a very tra­di­tion­al in­stru­ment. It's still about Yel­low Bird and Is­land in the Sun and you could do that if you want to play the cor­po­rate scene but on the school side, young­sters not get­ting in­volved. "I am try­ing to get them back, I want them to un­der­stand the tra­di­tion­al con­cepts but al­so un­der­stand that it could be the stan­dard in­stru­ment for a soloist. I am try­ing to get them to see it doesn't have to be in an en­sem­ble, it could stand alone," he said. Though hard pressed to pick a favourite track, Austin sin­gled out Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion as one he liked.

"I love Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion be­cause of the tex­ture of the whole rock edge and the soul­ful tone of the pan. It's my el­dest son's favourite song," said Austin, who is a fa­ther of three sons and one girl.

The al­bum on­ly took Austin two months to com­plete. It was re­al­ly sim­ple, he said, be­cause he lives mu­sic 24/7 and has the abil­i­ty to pro­duce his own work. Austin, who has his own pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, called Luv, broad­ened his skill by learn­ing the more tech­ni­cal as­pects of mu­sic pro­duc­tion and has done work for hip hop and R&B artistes, as well as pro­duced Elec­tro dance num­bers such as Plan­et Earth, un­der the De­wa la­bel. In 1999, Austin pro­duced his first pan al­bum, called Far From Home. He plans to re­lease a Pan in Mo­tion Vol 2 in the sum­mer.

Re­flect­ing on his de­ci­sion to pur­sue his ca­reer in pan, Austin urged oth­ers who are pas­sion­ate about the in­stru­ment to fol­low their dreams. "I re­al­ly want peo­ple to un­der­stand that if you be­lieve in any­thing and your heart is in it, you can earn a de­cent liv­ing, a fan­tas­tic liv­ing, off of the steel pan. One thing I learnt through my own jour­neys in life is that you are on­ly lim­it­ed by your thoughts. Find your vi­sion, find your goals," he ad­vised, prais­ing his un­cle and Pro­fes­sor Ken Philmore for their in­flu­ence in his life.

Pan in Mo­tion Vol 1 will be launched in March on iTunes and Ama­zon.com. For more in­for­ma­tion, go to www.re­verb­na­tion.com/wadeaustin.