Our Mission
The mission of Pan Outreach is to provide world music education and arts-rich experiences through steel pan instruction and performance. We believe every person has a right to a well-rounded education that includes the arts and all of the benefits they bring. Our core values are integrity, excellence, personal development, community, and entertainment.
Our Program
Pan Outreach provides free classroom steel-drum instruction to Title I K-12 schools in the urban core of the Twin Cities and a free summer Pan Camp with an opportunity to perform with our professional steel-drum bands and guest artists.
Our program is designed to complement the existing music programs of our host schools. Throughout the year, teaching artists travel from school to school, setting up 12 lead pans, 6 double seconds, 5 cello pans, and 3 bass pans. Some of our host schools have a music specialist on staff, but many do not. In all cases, our teaching artists “team teach” with in-school host teachers to help K-12 students prepare and perform on pans over the course of a 4 to 9 week residency.
Our teaching artists use demographic and student proficiency data available from our school-district partners to tailor the content of each residency for the needs of the specific students at each host school. While steel pan performance is often a large part of our residencies, it is only one focus of our program. Pan Outreach uses the pan as a cross-curricular educational tool, with lessons in history, science, and culture. Steel pans are native to Trinidad & Tobago, a country with a rich cultural heritage and a history of colonization and slavery that is particularly relevant as our nation reckons with institutional racism.
Our curriculum aligns with MN music education standards. We track and measure 7 student learning outcomes, using pre- and post-residency testing and videos. At the conclusion of a Pan Outreach residency, it is our goal that students will be able to:
- Identify and perform increasingly complex rhythms and musical patterns.
- Demonstrate their ability to create a specific sound quality on all four voices of the steel pan.
- Recognize, define, and interpret the elements of music notation.
- Perform multi-part music in an ensemble setting.
- Demonstrate leadership in rehearsals and performances.
- Compare and contrast elements of different music genres.
- Understand and discuss the ways in which social, political, economic, philosophical, and aesthetic factors help to shape different musical genres.
To help us ensure that our curriculum is relevant to our students, we have an advisory panel of educators, administrators, and students who inform us about gaps in arts programming that Pan Outreach can help address. It is critical that we offer content relevant to our students and bring Pan Outreach to those students who are struggling academically and lack access to arts programming.
Our History
The Pan Outreach program was founded by Jeremy Kunkel with the financial support of 501(c)3 non-profit Chops, Inc. Jeremy has been involved with Chops, Inc. in varying degrees since its creation as a marching percussion group in 1991. In 2013 Jeremy was approached by Kevin Kimes, a board member of the Chops, Inc. organization, about adding a new music ensemble to the other groups that Chops already offered, and so the Pan-Handlers Steel Drum Band was born. Since 2014, Pan-handlers has been entertaining audiences all over the Twin Cities.
After performances Pan-handlers sometimes allowed audience members to try out the steel drum instruments. This usually led to audience members wanting to know how they could take lessons or learn how to play. Thus, the idea of having a “traveling school of pan” started to develop and was brought to the Chops, Inc. board of directors as a proposal for yet another way to follow their mission to improve lives through music education and the performing arts.
Following the success of the first Pan Outreach residency at Boeckman Middle School in February of 2018, demand for Pan Outreach spread quickly, so in 2021, we began offering residencies full-time throughout the school year. Today, with our program reaching nearly 2,000 students each year, Jeremy Kunkel and all of our teaching artists look to the future, seeking opportunities to reach more students and striving to improve the program with content that is relevant and accessible to all.
Our Staff
Jeremy Kunkel, Director
Jeremy Kunkel has over 30 years of percussion experience and is the founder of the Pan Outreach program and Pan-handlers Steel Drum Band. Jeremy developed a passion for steel pan while completing the Bachelor of Music Education Degree program at The University of Memphis, and is thrilled to be leading a program that combines music education and pan. Jeremy has a long history of involvement with many renowned performance ensembles including The Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps, the Tony and Emmy award-winning Broadway production, Blast! and The Silver Stars Steel Orchestra in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago for the 2019 Panorama Finals competition. As an active educator, arranger, and clinician Jeremy has numerous championships and professional accolades to his credit.
Jeremy Kunkel is a native of Minnesota and currently resides in Northfield with his wife and two children.
Alix Stuart, Educator
Alix Stuart is an Ohio native with a passion for teaching music. Her holistic approach leaves room for a variety of learners while she focuses on skills that lead to a life-long enjoyment of music. Although her primary instrument is piano, she also plays trombone and steel pan. Her other interests include cooking, reading the hottest new literature, and being outdoors whenever possible.
Amanda Rice, Educator
Amanda Rice was born in Trinidad and Tobago, and moved to Minnesota in 2016 to attend graduate school at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She is primarily a violin and ukulele teacher, and also teaches yoga with the online studio Yoga for All Musicians. Amanda holds a BFA in Performing Arts, a BSc in Psychology, a diploma in Western Classical Music, and a Master of Music in Music Education. Amanda has been teaching the violin for 11 years, and she is also a 200 hour Registered Yoga Teacher. She has played violin with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Trinidad and Tobago, and has received scholarships to attend music festivals at Dartington International Summer Festival and the British Isles Music Festival, both in England, and the Tuckamore Chamber Fesitval in Newfoundland, Canada.
When she isn’t teaching or playing the violin, Amanda is usually crocheting, doing yoga, reading, or hanging out with her husband and her two dogs, Speedy and Gordie.
Lance Pollonais, Educator
Lance Pollonais was born in Trinidad and Tobago and attended Fatima College, Port of Spain as an honors student. He moved to Minnesota at a young age, assisting Cliff Alexis at Central High School in St Paul building steel pans and performing. Lance has years of experience in playing pan both as an individual and as part of a full steel band competing in Panorama for the band Pandemonium under the arrangement of Ray Holman and Clive Bradley in Trinidad. Lance has been performing on drum set and percussion in and around Minnesota since 1980.
Lance’s understanding and knowledge of both the instrument and the music is invaluable to his teaching and sharing his knowledge of Trinidadian culture.
