Es­delle has been the leader of a Caribbean Jazz group called Chan­tal Es­delle and Moyenne since its con­cep­tion in 1998. To­geth­er they've played re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al jazz fes­ti­vals such as the Ha­vana In­ter­na­tion­al Jazz Fes­ti­val, Grena­da Spice, the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence and the T&T Steel Pan Jazz Fes­ti­val and Jazz on the Greens. Most of the time, how­ev­er, the group plays small­er, more in­ti­mate events, and, once or twice a year, ma­jor events at UWI, Queen's Hall or The Lit­tle Carib The­atre. Though she's best known now as a pi­anist, she will be re­mem­bered by hard-core jazz afi­ciona­dos as a steel pan play­er. She was the joint win­ner of the 1992 Pan Soloist com­pe­ti­tion at Pan is Beau­ti­ful VI, ty­ing with Liam Teague. Her love af­fair with mu­sic be­gan quite by ac­ci­dent, at age four, when her fa­ther took her to the home of well-known old-school mu­sic teacher, Louise McIn­tosh, founder of the Pan Pipers. "I told him I want­ed to stay," she re­calls. She stud­ied un­der her for the next 14 years, do­ing what she calls "the usu­al stuff": prac­ti­cal pi­ano and singing. Jo­cleyn Sealey lat­er be­came her vo­cal coach, and be­fore she was out of her teens, Es­delle had earned her­self dis­tinc­tions and mer­its all the way up to Grade 8 in voice and pi­ano.

For Es­delle, the next step was ob­vi­ous: she went on to achieve her ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion... but not ex­act­ly in the field she was most pas­sion­ate about. She want­ed to study sound en­gi­neer­ing, and Berklee Col­lege of Mu­sic in Boston, USA, of­fered it. "When I was younger I want­ed to be ei­ther a sound en­gi­neer or the Vice Pres­i­dent...I don't know why, but it was al­ways the VICE Pres­i­dent... of a record­ing com­pa­ny. But when I got there I found I pre­ferred writ­ing and play­ing." She re­ceived a schol­ar­ship and chose in­stead to study for a Bach­e­lor of Arts in Jazz Com­po­si­tion. Since then she has al­so com­plet­ed a Mas­ter's de­gree in eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gy from York Uni­ver­si­ty in Toron­to. Why jazz? Es­delle cred­its her ear­ly ex­po­sure to her par­ents' im­pres­sive li­brary of records, brought back from their so­journs in the US and Eu­rope. "I al­so liked the things Earl Rod­ney and Clive Bradley were do­ing on ca­lyp­so record­ings. I de­cid­ed I didn't want to con­tin­ue study­ing clas­si­cal mu­sic." "Life in the arts is not easy," she says, "but the mu­si­cians in my group and my col­leagues from school have cho­sen to make a liv­ing through their mu­sic." And the sat­is­fac­tion of cre­at­ing and con­nect­ing is al­ways enough to keep her go­ing. "You have to hold on to that de­spite the pres­sures of cap­i­tal­ism. Peo­ple have dif­fer­ent ideas about what they want to get in life. You have to de­cide what you want." Es­delle's oth­er mu­sic projects in­clude the com­po­si­tion and record­ing of mu­sic for the lo­cal doc­u­men­tary, The Soli­tary Al­chemist, by lo­cal film­mak­er, Mariel Brown, a three-year run of the week­ly jazz pro­gramme, "The Chan­tal Es­delle Caribbean Jazz Hour" on 100.5 WMJX, a two-year lec­ture stint at UWI, a teach­ing gig at Bish­op Anstey High School East, and the es­tab­lish­ment of a mu­sic per­for­mance pro­gramme in To­ba­go with the Min­istry of To­ba­go Af­fairs.

Faith­ful to her Caribbean her­itage and ex­pe­ri­ence en­hanced by her time spent play­ing with An­dre Tanker, Se?or Ruiz, Wayne Bruno, Des­per­a­does and many oth­er steel­bands, she shies away from play­ing what she calls "straight-ahead" or stan­dard jazz, pre­fer­ring to cel­e­brate her ori­gins by us­ing Caribbean and South Amer­i­can mu­si­cal forms like ca­lyp­so, son, zouk, sam­ba and bossa in her mu­sic. "Where I live and who I am in­forms Her two al­bums, en­ti­tled Im­bi­zo Moyenne and New Hope, fea­ture orig­i­nal ma­te­r­i­al from her and from fel­low band mem­bers. New Hope fea­tures mu­sic from Glen­ford "Kevin" Sobers and Im­bi­zo Moyenne fea­tures mu­sic from Dou­glas Re­don. New Hope lists Glen­ford Sobers, Don­ald Noel, Moses Au­guste, Sean Thomas, Michelle Mar­fan and Theron Shaw as its mu­si­cians and is avail­able at trinidad­tunes.com. Cuts from both al­bums may be heard at my­space.com/chan­tales­delle. With­in the next year, she's look­ing for­ward to fur­ther em­brac­ing her her­itage by or­gan­is­ing a re­gion­al tour in the near fu­ture, al­though the dif­fi­cul­ty of mov­ing from is­land to is­land can prove a hin­drance. She plans to launch her al­bum, Im­bi­zo Moyenne, with part pro­ceeds go­ing to so­cial projects in Haiti. The emo­tions that swell up in Chan­tal Es­delle when she's per­form­ing are hard to de­scribe. "It's a bless­ing to be able to do what you love. I feel con­nect­ed and ap­pre­cia­tive. It feels good that when I am fin­ished, peo­ple al­most al­ways ex­press that they got some­thing out of hear­ing us (Moyenne) per­form. It's nur­tur­ing to use your gift dai­ly, and not sell your­self short. I feel priv­i­leged."