Thanks to Ze Sen and the members of Kazan Taiko for a lot of bon-taiko fun on Thursday. We did a bit of basics, learned Helio, and then individuals arranged short solos. Thank you everyone!
Winnepeg taiko player, Margaret McKenty, came to LA for three days of lessons. We spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday working on shime technique, upright basics, and slant form and movement. Thank you for all the fun, Margaret!
My shamisen friend, Yasoyo Sensei, helped to organize a fundraiser to raise money for repairs to the tea room at Koyasan Temple. I played a very short excerpt from a shamisen piece I’m preparing for my teacher’s next visit in March, and my recent solo slant-drum stuff. Thank you to all the enthusiastic audience members who made the event a success!
My sister’s family is so inspiring! Check out this article about Dan’s work as elementary-school principal. After switching the entire school to computers running free software (gnu/linux), he made the school solar-powered and instituted healthy, local, home-made foods in the lunch program. Go Dan Go!
Hello taiko friends! Our next slant-drum event has been set! Join me to prepare for it!
I’m arranging a battle at JCI Gardens (Gardena) on March 11 at approximately 1pm. It will be similar in form to what we did at Taiko Conference but with “Singles” and “Doubles” categories. The event will be outside and will precede an On Ensemble / shamisen concert Hiro and I are producing. I imagine we’ll get together in pairs and small groups between now and then to practice and I’ll assign battle partners once we get closer. Each player will have about 90 seconds to play.
Let me know if you’re interested (email kris at On Ensemble dot org) and I’ll send available dates for getting together to practice. If you know of others who might be interested, please pass this info along.
Let the slant-nanigans begin!
Tonight was the debut of the new arrangement of slant-drum movements Maz and I have been working on. We survived without dropping a batchi! Here’s a video of the piece from the rehearsal. Thanks to Maz, Shoji, and Kelvin for all the time they put into the piece!
Thank you also to the enthusiastic audience at tonight’s show, as well as Lisa Shimamoto (and Shojin vegan restaurant!) for the great, pre-concert food, and all the folks at the JACCC, the Torrance Cultural Arts Foundation, and the Armstrong Theater! Thank you also to our 2011 FoundatiOn Team donors who empowered this spurt of new creative work! It was an honor and joy to debut three new pieces!
The KUSC radio program “Spotlight on the Arts” interviewed me regarding our upcoming performance at Armstrong Theater. Here is the blurb they created.
