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.
Kris is the by far the most handy of the On Ensemble members. You probably have a pretty good idea about this if you’ve read any of his posts of have seen his apartment. He’s the one with power tools the one that fixes stands when they break down or can make cases for the koto or turntable. But even amongst guys with power tools it’s not everyone who will attempt to make their own portable computer. More of a lugtop than a laptop but still very impressive. I’m calling it the Bergstrom Lugtop 3000.
While Kris and Kelvin were leading a workshop for Inazuma Taiko Maz and I prototyped a new workshop format with Christian, Jean-Francois and Sandra of Arashi Daiko - the wine bar improvisation workshop. It basically works like this: share a great bottle of wine, talk endlessly about the nature of creativity and art then end with an impromptu vocal improvisation after the wine has been finished. It’s only a prototype workshop but the results from the first were amazing and we’re looking forward to trying this again! Thanks to Amie for her recommendation. If you are into food Amie is a great food writer and has a blog on her restaurant recommendations and culinary explorations at: multiculturiosity.blogspot.com.
I can trace my love affair with wine back to a single meal I had at Glutton’s when Makoto Ono was the chef. (more…)
We just flew Kelvin back to Ashland after a week of creative rehearsals. It was a great opportunity to re-energize On Ensemble with new ideas and creative possibilities ahead of our upcoming cross country tour in January. When we started On Ensemble back in 2001 we were just a couple years out of college and full of high hopes and dreams. We weren’t really sure what kind of music we wanted to make. The only two things we knew were 1) we wanted to make music with a small group of dedicated artists and 2) we wanted to explore new musical directions with the taiko. Now that we’re coming up on 10 years as a group a lot has changed. The reality of being a group of four working musicians means that we are all involved in many different projects. We are also getting older. Life is changing. We are starting families, buying houses and have many more responsibilities than we did when we started On Ensemble. This past week felt like we refocused our energies on what brought us together in the beginning and what keeps us moving forward: the need to create.
This is very exciting news! Our good friend Christopher Tin’s album “Calling all Dawns” has just been nominated for two GRAMMY awards! One for “Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompaning Vocalist” for his song “Baba Yetu” and another for “Best Classical Crossover Album”. On Ensemble recorded taiko and percussion parts on the album for the song “Mado Kara Mieru” and I did some electronic beats for the song “Rassemblons-Nous”. Chris’ nomination for the song “Baba Yetu” also marks the first time a song that was written for a video game has received a Grammy nomination.
Last year I was fortunate enough to get a Grammy nomination with Hiroshima for the album “Legacy” and I only have one of bit advice for Chris: this is going to sound silly but bring food! I spent most of my first grammy experience hungry and jealous of Dan and June’s banh mi sandwich that they snuck in.
On Monday afternoon at approximately 4:00pm I thought “hmmm… the new Facebook group features look great… maybe there should be a North American Taiko Community group.” So I hit the little create group button. It was kinda cumbersome adding friends so I only added 20 or so people to the initial group but that was enough because in just over 24hours there were over 800 members. Crazy! It was like an explosion of taiko nuts on Facebook.
On Ensemble has recently been looking for a new studio and we’ve been clearing out our storage locker and trying to find new homes for some of our equipment that we don’t use. A drummer friend of Maz and I from Mt. Shasta will be inheriting our trusty old van and Sam the director of the Yamasong short film will be taking two flight cases. We also had 4 beautiful suwari dai that Kris has built during our college years. We used them at Stanford Taiko and in the early On Ensemble years but they’ve been collecting dust for years. So I took a picture of them and posted it to the group and in 5 minutes had new eager homes for the shime stands!
I’m pretty excited about this Facebook group as a possible hub of online activity for the North American Taiko Community. The next step will be to figure out how we can turn all of this connectedness into something that will actually be useful for all those taiko nuts out there trying to start groups, make drums, write songs and even make a living with the art form. What kinds of resources might be useful? Can we actually pull our collective online energy and do something interesting? Or will it just be a welcome break from work?
Like Kris just posted Brent came by the studio to do a photo session for his portraiture class. We went down to the LA river which is just a couple of blocks from the studio for the outdoor shots. Brent does a lot of design work for us including the hand printed cover of our last limited run EP. See more of his work at BPdesignlab.com.
Our good friends at San Jose Taiko team up with bay area DJ group Bangerz for a song about robots!
Okay so usually I would NOT turn OnEnsemble.org into an advertisement for anything but I feel compelled to let you all know know that I found something I thought I would never find: mainland shave ice that doesn’t suck! For years and years I’ve been wondering why it’s so hard to make shave ice like Hawaii’s famous Matsumotos or my personal favorite Waiola’s.
When I lived in Hawai’i going to Waiola’s was a religious experience. Inspired by chado I sought perfection in the ritual of my own shave ice ceremony. To arrive fully with all of your senses in a single moment to enjoy the pleasure of a lychee shave ice is to attain some kind of modern day enlightenment. (more…)