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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!

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I taught a slant-drum form and choreography workshop last month at Taiko Conference and had a great time slant-drumming with the group! Here are a few photos and videos that participants have sent my way. Thank you, everyone!

Comprehensive Choreography Correction Clinic

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I wrote a short essay for participants in my workshop at Taiko Conference about sharing and our community. Hope you like it!

More info about copyleft:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgCKRN_Bzzs
http://blog.ninapaley.com/2011/07/04/rantifesto/
http://questioncopyright.org/creator_endorsed

Yuta arranged our first Matsuri Crashers battle at Taiko Ten 2011. Start prepping your crew… more battles to come. i31d03d!jns+vw unite!

And a suitably blurry sighting of the Gorilla…

Maz and I debuted a new slant-drum arrangement at Shasta Yama. We’re working on some new batchi hand-off ideas and debuted the “Scuttlebutt” switch. We almost debuted the “ITC” switch but aborted last minute. We’ll get it next time, Maz!

Thanks to Brady for jumping in to make the piece happen, even though it was literally his first time playing the piece with us and the first time he’d played those drums. Thanks to Jeanne and Russel for the opportunity!

Congratulations to Jeanne, Russel, and Mario for a great Shasta Yama! Maz and I arrived a week early to help, but everyone is so organized, all the prep had pretty much been done. We had time to go jump off a bridge.

This year’s Shasta Yama festival featured Shasta Taiko, Stanford Taiko, and Portland Taiko, and over 1000 people attended. The weather was delightful… the mountain was beautiful… and the music was great. Thank you to everyone!