Kametron has three modes. In "Kametron" mode he just sits in a corner listening to music with a pair of headphones, not terribly exciting. In "Taiko Kametron" mode he stands up and removes a pair of batchi from a secret compartment. In "Giga Kametron" mode massive speakers come out of his fore arms pounding music. The resulting energy surge usually shorts out his CPU causing him to twitch and dance uncontrollably.
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!
Graphation Film Festival No. 1 Trailers from Graphation on Vimeo.
Yamasong is screening at the Graphation Film Festival at 8:00pm on Thursday March 16th at the Hive Gallery! There will be a Q/A panel with myself and Sam after the screen then a showing of one of the Jim Henson masterpieces that inspired Yamasong, The Dark Crystal!
Graphation @ the Hive
Thursday, March 17th, 8:00pm
The Hive Gallery and Studios
729 S. Spring St.
Los Angeles, CA
Kaoru Watanabe
TAIKO 2.0 at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts is coming this Saturday March 12th! Today we are highlighting Brooklyn based flute and taiko player Kaoru Watanabe. Kaoru was born into a musical family, both of his parents play with the St. Louis Symphony. He’s a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Manhattan School of Music. He got his start playing taiko in St. Louis then later with the New York based group Soh Daiko. In 1998 Kaoru moved to Sado Island to become an apprentice with Kodo. He became the first American to become a performing member of Kodo and spent six years touring around the world with the ensemble. In 2005 he become Artistic Director of Earth Celebration, Kodo’s annual world music festival held in Sado every summer. In 2006 Kaoru left Kodo for New York City and has quickly become one of the most sought after fue and taiko players in North America.
Only two weeks to our big TAIKO 2.0 concert at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts! Today we are highlighting Montreal based multi-percussionist Patrick Graham. Patrick is one of our favorite artists to work with and is the quintessential “On Ensemble” kind of musician. He fuses his training in Western classical and contemporary music with his extensive explorations of Mediterranean, Irish, South Indian and Japanese rhythms to create a highly personal, cross-cultural approach to percussion. The ability to draw inspiration from every corner of the globe yet make music that is personal is something that we strive for and Patrick approach has had a huge influence on On Ensemble’s music.
I first met Patrick at a frame drum workshop he was giving in Tokyo while I was living there. After meeting him I remember being encouraged knowing that there were other musicians out there wandering the globe following the same path I was on. Several years later once we started On Ensemble we were re-introduced through a mutual acquaintance who thought we would be natural collaborators. Imagine the surprise when it turns out we had met several years earlier half way around the world! Ever since then we’ve played together every chance we can and we’re looking forward to having Patrick be a part of TAIKO 2.0 at the Cerritos Center.
Also check out Patrick’s album Rheo which is an On Ensemble favorite and features two tracks that we’ll be performing at Cerritos Center!
I’ll be writing little previews on many guest artists leading up to our March 12th Taiko 2.0 concert at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. This is really ambitious concert for us. We are collaborating with five guest artists from around the world and will be debuting several new pieces. Kris has also working on our new ambitious “Burn Your Own” system that will allow audience members to bring a blank CD to the concert and take home an audio recording of the concert! This is definitely On Ensemble’s most creatively ambitious concert to date.
Our first guest artist profile is the amazing dancer Chieko Kojima. Chieko was born in Iwafune, Tochigi Prefecture and joined Ondekoza in 1976. When Kodo was formed Chieko distinguished herself as one of the few regular performing members and became Kodo’s principal dancer. As a member of Kodo she has toured around the world and has become known for her innovative interpretations of Japanese folk dance. Chieko also performs with the song and dance group “Hanayui” and producers her own solo performances and collaborations. She is currently on tour with Kaoru Watanabe and luckily we were able to work out her schedule so that she could join us for this special Cerritos Center concert.
On a personal note Chieko’s taiko playing style has been very influential to my own development as a taiko player. When I first saw her play “Hana Hachijo” I was blown away by the beautiful her innovative movements and the way her movements and rhythms combined to make such effortless phrases. It was that kind of effortless phrasing of movement and rhythm that I tried to incorporate into the open source piece “Omiyage”.
This is super exciting news! Our good friend Christopher Tin just won two Grammys one for Best Instrumental Accompanying Vocalists and Best Classical Crossover Album. Kris, Maz and I recorded taiko and percussion parts for this album and I did some electronic music production as well. There were over 100 artist involved in the making of this album all brought together by Chris’ vision and amazing compositions. Congratulations Chris!