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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!

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20111023/GREEN01/110230305/-Vermont-sort-independence-?odyssey=nav|head

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!

The KUSC radio program “Spotlight on the Arts” interviewed me regarding our upcoming performance at Armstrong Theater. Here is the blurb they created.

http://www.kusc.org/Episodes.aspx?PID=2146

Google has a fun tool to search through their catalogue of scanned books called the “Ngram Viewer“. The viewer allows users to search for the occurrence of a term or terms in approximately 5,000,000 books from 1800 to 2000. The term “taiko” gives the following, for example.

I’m guessing the spike in the 1960s coincides with the publication of Taiko: An Epic Novel of War and Glory in Feudal Japan by Eiji Yoshikawa (“taiko” also means “great ruler”), but who knows… could it be the influence of Osuwa and Sukeroku?!

Here is a TED video about the project by some of its contributors. Have fun!

For the Taiko Conference workshop last month I also updated my essay on practice. It is shorter, with a few more tips and tricks. Thanks to Danny Yamamoto for the good revision advice!

http://onensemble.org/2008/10/essay-thoughts-on-practice/

Thank you to the 800+ people who made the 2011 North American Taiko Conference a grand success. Videos, photos, and essays from my Bon Taiko Bonanza workshop coming soon!