San Juan East Side Symphony wins ninth Panorama Single Pan title

San Juan East Side Sym­pho­ny Steel Or­ches­tra ce­ment­ed its dom­i­nance in the Sin­gle Pan Band cat­e­go­ry of Panora­ma on Sat­ur­day night, cap­tur­ing its ninth na­tion­al ti­tle and sec­ond con­sec­u­tive crown at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. Per­form­ing Jumbie by Machel Mon­tano, the band de­liv­ered a tight­ly ex­e­cut­ed arrange­ment by Du­vone Stew­art, earn­ing an im­pres­sive 285 points to top a field of 25 com­peti­tors.

The vic­to­ry reaf­firmed San Juan East Side Sym­pho­ny’s rep­u­ta­tion as one of the most dis­ci­plined and con­sis­tent out­fits on the na­tion­al cir­cuit. The band held off a spir­it­ed chal­lenge from La Cre­ole Pan Groove, which placed sec­ond with 282 points for Pan By Storm, while Chord Mas­ters Steel Or­ches­tra se­cured third with 280 points for Show­down (Band Meet Band).

For San Juan East Side Sym­pho­ny, the night marked more than an­oth­er ti­tle. It high­light­ed the strength of a sys­tem built on dis­ci­pline, loy­al­ty, and long-term plan­ning. Own­er and man­ag­er An­dre Fran­co said the for­mu­la be­hind the or­ches­tra’s sus­tained suc­cess is no se­cret.

“I am usu­al­ly a pan play­er, but my strat­e­gy is re­al­ly man­age­ment and pub­lic re­la­tions. My thing is con­sis­ten­cy,” Fran­co said af­ter the re­sults.

“You have to be con­sis­tent with your re­sources and you have to be very se­ri­ous. You can’t have peo­ple play­ing with X, Y and Z bands. A lot of play­ers play with mul­ti­ple bands. If you are play­ing with me, you can’t play with all the bands be­cause it is like the Bible: you can’t serve more than one mas­ter. That is my prin­ci­ple. It’s sim­ple, but you have to be con­sis­tent with it.”

Stew­art, whose arrange­ment de­liv­ered back-to-back cham­pi­onships for the band, praised the mu­si­cians for their com­mit­ment but urged the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to re­flect on de­clin­ing au­di­ence at­ten­dance at ma­jor steel­band events. De­spite the high stan­dard of per­for­mances on the night, emp­ty seats were no­tice­able in the Grand Stand.

“I just want to urge the pub­lic,” Stew­art said. “If this is your na­tion­al in­stru­ment, why can’t we fill the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah Grand­stand for a Sin­gle Pan fi­nal?

“This is our na­tion­al in­stru­ment. We need to ask our­selves: what are we do­ing wrong? What are we not do­ing to en­gage the pub­lic to come out and sup­port steel­pan in this form? This is a gift that God has blessed this coun­try with, and we need to se­ri­ous­ly re­flect on where we are go­ing next.”

With the 2026 Panora­ma sea­son now un­der­way, San Juan East Side Sym­pho­ny’s em­phat­ic win sets a high bar for the up­com­ing Small, Medi­um, and Large Band cat­e­gories, re­mind­ing the na­tion that the Sin­gle Pan cat­e­go­ry re­mains a show­case of raw tal­ent, in­no­va­tion, and cul­tur­al pride.