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Been putting my taiko to good use recently. Along with beginning rehearsals with the Henry V cast, I’ve been collaborating with some great local musicians. Here’s one of the projects.

Ecstatic Dance With Live Music
Sacred Sound Meditation and Soul Inspired Music
Taiko-Cello-Violin-Didgeridoo-Vocals
$15 At The Door

Southern Oregon University’s Department of Music will be presenting the Oregon PAS Day of Percussion on April 21, 2012. I will be giving a 75 minute introduction to Taiko workshop scheduled for 9:30AM and a 30-40 minute performance that evening scheduled for 7:30PM which will showcase some of my original compositions and the Taiko classic “Monochrome”. I’ll be joined by great local musicians such as saxophonist Steve Davidson, bassist Michael Molleman and even my current taiko students. If you happened to have seen “Rolling Thunder” (my collaboration with the SOU Percussion Dept.)last November, you’ll definitely want to check this show out. I’m also really excited to share the stage with one of the greatest drummers of all time Alex Acuna.
Southern Oregon University Music Recital Hall
1250 Siskiyou Blvd.
Ashland OR 97520

Thanks again to all the participants! Now that the ball is rolling… looking forward to revising and refining the solos and battle concept!

Thank you to Kim and Ayano for this great, HD video!

Derek vs Louis – structure 10

Jason vs Mike – structure 405

Aki vs Andrew – structure 101

Mark vs Tomomi – structure 405

Gorilla vs Candice – structure 101

Kerry vs Dan – structure 134

Gorilla vs David – structure 134

Jason and David vs Maz and Kris – structure 405…

Battle ending

Thanks to the work of Matt Gallizzi and the last-minute help of recording-engineer Mikael, we got a nice audio recording of the concert and were able to distribute free CDs not long after the show.

I don’t have quite all the tracks yet, but here’s what I have thus far.

03_fuji_ondo
04_dagakki
05_06_hisashi_9.0
07_kagamijishi
08_re_recycled_beats
09_jack_bazaar
10_tally_ho

(For those of you who took home a CD, sorry if the tracks were out of concert order… there was a little bug in our script. Here are the names of the tracks on your CDs. 1) Dagakki, 2) Tally Ho, 3) Re-recycled Beats, 4) Kagamijishi, 5) Fuji Ondo, 6) Hisashi, 7) Jack Bazaar)

I was surprised to see these surface on YouTube and on the Facebook Taiko Community page. Enjoy.

On Ensemble recently went on tour to Wyoming and then to Texas. As you know, we drive EVERYWHERE. It helps save cash and, even though it’s still burning fuel, it’s better for our carbon footprint versus flying. Fun time on the road!

-Approximate miles driven in the van – 5,563 plus
-Shoji and Kelvin’s approximate time spent in the van – 49 plus
-Maz and Kris’ approximate time spent in the van – 90 plus
-States passed through – California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Texas
-Time zones passed through – 3 (Pacific, Mountain, and Central)
-Number of Lecture/Demonstrations – 7
-Number of Concerts – 3
-Times chains had to be used – 2
-Approximate cups of rice made – 30
-Approximate curry lunches (Punjab Choley from Trader Joe’s) consumed – 13
-Approximate tofu dinners consumed – 10
-Times our gas light went on – Once. There was a stretch of the 10 freeway in Texas where there were no gas stations for like 150 miles. Abunai!
-We actually had time to watch the 49ers vs Giants NFC Championship game! It was fun, but we wished for a different out come!
-Times I got asked if I was “that guy in the Hangover” – 4. Dang Ken Jeong. Is this a good compliment or a bad one? Maybe it’s time for a haircut.

-Times Kris got asked if he looked like Scott Hamilton – Once, but this was probably the 2nd or 3rd time someone asked him that. Other people Kris has been compared to: Chris Martin of Coldplay, Paul Bettany, Ari Shapiro (voice only), and… Arnold Schwarzenegger???
-I asked Shoji and Kelvin who they’ve been compared to. Shoji said Jake Shimabukuro. Kelvin said Saul Williams.
-Kris won the “Man Card” of the tour. He was the best at backing up the trailer. I had to give up being the driver and he had to take over.
-Kris and I stopped at “The Thing” off of the Interstate 10 Freeway. I can’t tell you what it is. You have to google it. Silly stuff… it was only a dollar, so why NOT? Gotta do at least one silly thing on tour right?

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!