News and Updates

All posts in the "News and Updates" category.

Three-day intensive with Margaret McKenty

Sunday, October 30th, 2011

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!

Shamisen fundraiser for Koyasan Temple

Sunday, October 30th, 2011

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!

Brother-in-lawesome!

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

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

Join the next Matsuri Crashers Battle! – March 11, 2012

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

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!

On Ensemble radio bit

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

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

History of term “taiko” in literature

Monday, September 26th, 2011

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!

Thoughts on Practice essay updated

Monday, September 12th, 2011

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/

Taiko Conference was WONDERFUL!

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

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!

On Ensemble : Masato Baba, Kristofer Bergstrom, Shoji Kameda and Kelvin Underwood is proudly powered by WordPress
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