Pedro Eustache has played winds on over 150 film and video game soundtracks. Dune. Pirates of the Caribbean. Kung Fu Panda. Encanto. Coco. Ice Age. He's toured the world with Hans Zimmer Live and the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience, performed with Paul McCartney and John Williams, and has been mentored by Ravi Shankar. He builds his own instruments. He's spent 45 years perfecting something that most people experience only through a screen.
Atif sat down with Pedro for episode 14 of Zebra Spotlight — and the conversation went significantly deeper than either of them expected.
The Film Music Wind Specialist
Pedro Eustache is described as the first core world wind soloist in the Los Angeles international recording studio scene. That description — "core" world wind soloist — is meaningful. He's not a session player brought in occasionally for colour. He is the primary wind voice on a body of work spanning four decades, working with the most celebrated film composers in Hollywood.
His instrument range is extraordinary. He plays concert flute, piccolo, penny whistle, Ney, bansuri, shakuhachi, duduk, Armenian duduk, wind synthesis, and over 100 customised or self-built instruments that exist nowhere else in the world. This isn't eccentric collector's behaviour — it's the practical necessity of being the person Hans Zimmer calls when he needs a wind sound that doesn't yet exist.
"I have my special unique head joint for my flute, which has this gyrating inside wedge that changes the tone of the flute. I can have a very bright tone, a wonderful full tone, and a very wood-like tone. It's very powerful."
The Projects He Can and Cannot Discuss
At the time of the interview, Pedro was simultaneously working on multiple NDA-protected film projects — "at least four I cannot talk about" — plus the Hans Zimmer Live 2023 world tour, World of Warcraft recordings for Blizzard Entertainment, a collaboration with Mexican DJ Andy Waldman, and a lecture and performance at SynthPlex 2022. He signed a new NDA the day before the interview.
What he could confirm: Prey (2022) and 3,000 Years of Longing (2022), for which he played the world winds and hadn't yet announced publicly. The volume and variety of work at this stage of his career reflects both his reputation and his range — the sonic territory he covers is so specific that there's essentially no one else to call.
On the Music and the Spiritual
Pedro's account of his creative life eventually turns to something unexpected. He and his wife Sarah lost their daughter to brain cancer 34 years ago. The grief was total. He describes the two of them as being on the brink of ending their lives.
What happened in that moment — the intervention, the experience, the way through — shaped everything that followed. Every note he plays since then is, in his words, an expression of gratitude. When Atif saw him perform The Lion King section in the Hans Zimmer Live show at Manchester Arena and watched Pedro play the penny whistle with his right hand pressed to his heart, that gesture was not performance. It was offering.
"Every breath I take, every note I play, I play like there's not going to be tomorrow — as an expression of gratitude. Not as a religious thing. As a life completely changed."
This matters for how his music is experienced. The technical mastery — the 100+ instruments, the NDA-covered film sessions, the 45 years of craft — is not separable from what he's experienced and survived. The audience at a Hans Zimmer concert doesn't know this story. But they feel something that they can't entirely explain.
The World of Hans Zimmer Live
Pedro's relationship with Hans Zimmer extends across years of touring and recording. The live concert environment — a global ensemble of world-class musicians from different countries and traditions — creates something that Pedro describes as inseparable from the quality of Zimmer's music.
Atif's experience at Manchester Arena — which he describes as Pedro "stealing the show" — reflects the specific experience of seeing a world-wind soloist at the top of his craft, performing material he has played hundreds of times with the emotional freshness of someone playing it for the last time. The Lion King arrangement in particular, with the Irish penny whistle and the cultural weight of what that instrument carries, is one of the most powerful individual moments in the Hans Zimmer Live shows.
"Hans, your music makes me glorify God. I cannot help it. When I hear Guthrie Govan playing, it takes me to another place. When I hear Juan Garcia Herreros on bass — these geniuses. I celebrate them."
The Instrument Maker and Synthesizer Pioneer
Pedro's second professional life alongside performing and recording is in instrument design and modification. He collaborates with Austrian engineer Dr. Matthias on custom modifications to analog modular synthesizer systems — specifically modifications to Behringer 2600 units used on the Hans Zimmer tours. He plays Lyricons (analog wind controllers) and a custom MIDI controller with a prototype mouthpiece that contains sensors detecting tongue movement inside the mouth, affecting the synthesized output in real time.
This is not hobbyist tinkering. Pedro is demonstrating a new class of expressive control — the physical intimacy of acoustic wind playing applied to electronic sound generation. For film composers, this opens sonic territory that neither pure acoustic playing nor conventional synthesizer programming can reach.
The Listening Experience: Why Hans Zimmer Sounds Better on a Good System
Pedro's performances on the Hans Zimmer Live recordings — including the Prague concert Blu-ray used widely as reference material in AV showrooms — carry the full dynamic and timbral complexity of his instruments. A duduk recorded at close range has a specific frequency profile and attack character. A penny whistle in a live arena has a spatial quality. These elements are present in the recording; what determines whether the listener hears them is the quality of the playback system.
On a reference home cinema system — the kind Atif designs and installs — Pedro's contribution to these recordings becomes fully audible in a way that typical home audio cannot reveal. The detail in the flute's attack, the resonance character of the Ney, the spatial positioning of the wind soloist within the ensemble — these are the texture of the music that gets lost when the playback system compresses or rounds what's in the signal.
Key Takeaways
- ▪Pedro Eustache has played winds on over 150 film and video game soundtracks and tours with Hans Zimmer Live, playing 100+ instruments including many he built or modified himself
- ▪His music is shaped by a specific personal experience — the loss of his daughter and the resolution that followed — which gives it an emotional quality that performers with only craft experience cannot replicate
- ▪The modification work with Behringer 2600 synthesizers and tongue-sensor MIDI controllers represents a new class of expressive wind synthesis
- ▪Reference home cinema playback reveals the full detail and spatial character of wind performances in film music recordings in a way that standard audio cannot
Frequently Asked Questions
What films has Pedro Eustache played wind solos on?
Pedro Eustache's notable credits include Dune (2021), Pirates of the Caribbean (multiple), Kung Fu Panda, Ice Age, Syriana, Encanto, and Coco, among over 150 film and video game soundtracks. He has worked with composers including Hans Zimmer, John Williams, John Debney, James Newton Howard, and John Powell.
What instruments does Pedro Eustache play?
Pedro plays concert flute, piccolo, penny whistle, Ney (Turkish end-blown flute), bansuri (Indian bamboo flute), shakuhachi (Japanese flute), duduk (Armenian double-reed), Armenian duduk variants, wind synthesis instruments including Lyricon, and over 100 custom or self-built instruments he has developed or modified over 45 years of professional work.
What is a Lyricon?
A Lyricon is an electronic wind instrument — essentially an analog wind controller that translates breath pressure, embouchure, and fingering into control voltages for synthesizers. The original Lyricon was developed in the 1970s and is prized for its expressive control relative to conventional MIDI wind controllers. Pedro Eustache plays modified Lyricons as part of his wind synthesis work.
Why is world wind soloist playing so prominent in Hans Zimmer's film music?
Hans Zimmer's compositional approach frequently draws on non-Western musical traditions to create sonic environments that locate a film in a specific cultural or geographical context without resorting to literal pastiche. The duduk in Gladiator, the Ney in Prince of Persia, the bansuri in various Asian-set productions — these are specific instrumental timbres that carry cultural and emotional resonance that conventional orchestral writing cannot replicate. A specialist like Pedro who can navigate dozens of these traditions authentically is irreplaceable.
How does a reference home cinema system change the experience of Hans Zimmer film music?
Hans Zimmer's scores are mixed with spatial detail and dynamic range that standard home audio compresses or rounds. A reference system — with calibrated playback, full dynamic range, and immersive audio capability — reveals the full textural character of a score: the specific resonance of Pedro's duduk, the spatial placement of solo wind instruments within the orchestral ensemble, the contrast between the intimate close-mic'd sound of a penny whistle and the full orchestral wave surrounding it. This is the difference between hearing a recording and experiencing what was recorded.
