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Here at On Ensemble each of us has several musical projects we are involved with. Kris and Maz both perform with Taikoproject, Kelvin performs with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and I perform with Hiroshima and have always been into producing electronic music. Two years ago I formed an electronic music duo with longtime friend and two time Grammy winning composer Christopher Tin called Stereo Alchemy. I’m excited to announce our debut album God of Love will be released this Valentine’s Day and is on pre-sale now! We are calling our sound ‘decadent electronica’ a seductive mix of trip-hop, post punk and synth pop that will appeal to fans of Massive Attack, Portishead, The Postal Service, M83 and Nine Inch Nails.

God of Love is a concept album that sets Renaissance and Romantic era poetry to beat driven tracks and epic soundscapes. It features vocals by singers Melissa R. Kaplan (of Universal Hall Pass and Splashdown), Mozez (of Zero 7), and Lia Rose (of Built for the Sea). The album was mixed by three-time Grammy-winning engineer Darrell Thorp (Radiohead, Beck, and Paul McCartney) and mastered by Tom Baker (Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson).

For a preview of the album and a free download of the title track ‘God of Love’ visit: www.stereoalchemy.com.

Whew! We made it back to Los Angeles in one piece. Happy to report that the trip up to Wyoming was quite a success! After our two performances in Pinedale we drove through a snow storm to get to Gillette. On Monday we performed two lecture demos at Paintbrush Elementary School then on Tuesday we played a morning show for local 7th graders followed by a concert that evening. We had a great turnout for the evening performance and many of the students that we performed for earlier came to the concert with their parents in tow. Huge thank you to the great staff at the Cam-plex Heritage Theater for brining us out to Wyoming. This marks the second year in a row we’ve had mid January tour out to the Northwest. Hopefully we’ll make it three in a row next year!

We’ve been having a good Wyoming tour thus far. On Wednesday we left Los Angeles early to make it to Salt Lake City for a workshop. Then on Thursday we drove from Salt Lake City into Pinedale Wyoming. Luckily for us the weather was beautiful. On Friday we started the day with a educational performance for the students of Pinedale Middle School. Later that evening we had a great concert performance at the Pinedale Auditorium. A huge thank you goes out to Patrick, Tim, Lars and Dana for bringing us out to Pinedale and for all their work in making our performances a success.

During our time in Pinedale we ended up eating at the Wind River Brewery three times in two days and even made friends with some of the regulars (shout out to Kenny!). Yesterday we drove from Pinedale to Gillette through terrible weather. It was slow going but we arrived in one piece. Tomorrow we’ll be going out to a local elementary school for a couple of lecture demos. Today we finish our tech early and are settling down to watch the Niners!

Happy New Year On Ensemble fans! 2012 is going to be great year and we’re starting off the year with performances in Pinedale and Gillette Wyoming. We’ll be in Pinedale on Friday Jan 20th for educational outreach programs and concert performance in the evening. Then we’re headed to Gillette for educational outreach programs on Monday the 23rd followed by a concert on the 24th. Check out our calendar section for more details.

Friday Jan 20th
7:00pm
Pinedale Auditorium
147 E. Hennick St.
Pinedale, WY 82941

Tuesday Jan 24th
7:00pm
Heritage Center Theater
Gillette, Wyoming

Yuta was in town this week and asked me to teach a series of intensive workshops on all-things-slant-drum. As part of that series I prepared the following video to explore basic form and strike.

For the last few months, friends and I have been working on the lighted-batchi technique with the hopes it will enable more detailed comparison of one’s right and left-hand strikes, as well as comparisons of different players’ movements.

The video below is excerpts of right vs left hand comparisons and Yuta vs Kris comparisons in both betta and slant-drum position. We tried a two-camera shot, as well as more complicated moves at the end. If nothing else, they’re pretty to look at!

With practice, I hope lighted batchi will be a useful tool in our taiko exploration toolbox!

Here are my favorite videos from 2011!
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Well, it’s a bit late, but here are the 19 vidoes I most enjoyed 2010. (click “Read the rest…” for videos)

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