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We’ve set our official release date for our new album “Ume in the Middle” for 3/3/09. We’re very excited to be working with the Planetary Group for radio, press and new media promotion. We’re going to have pre-release copies of album at our upcoming East Coast performances and will also be offering pre-release copies to our mailing list members.

Those of you who bought the album at our annual home concert and recent Minnesota gigs thank you! Your support is what makes our music possible!

Maz and I spent today in the studio working on our annual FoundatiOn Team EP.  Our FoudatiOn Team EPs are our chance to experiment in the studio with recording different instruments and trying things we aren’t that comfortable with.  Sometimes this will lead to a piece we’ll actually perform or put on our albums.  Yamasong started as a recording idea for our first FoundatiOn Team EP and now we have a live performance version and it appears on our upcoming album as the original and a remix done by our studio mate Charlie Campagna.

This year’s theme for the EP is “13″.  It all started with a collaboration we did with our Patrick Graham back in 2006.  Patrick had all these cool rhythms in meters relating to thirteen: 13/4, 13/8, 13/16, 13/32 etc…  We put together a song based on his ideas and performed it together a couple of times.  Recently Patrick called and asked if we’d record parts for the piece for his upcoming album and we did a long distance recording collaboration.  The piece, now called “Strikes 13″ turned out to be a lot of fun and is on his upcoming album and on our EP. (more…)

Our concert is tomorrow!! Apparently there has been some confusion with the ticket website. For a while it was indicating that our concert was sold out but there are still tickets available! Everything should be okay now but you can always call the JACCC box office directly and there will be tickets available at the door.

We had a great run through tonight and we’re really excited about tomorrow’s performance. As a special treat we’ll have some pre-release copies of our new album “Ume in the Middle” available at the concert!

Just finished a weekend of fun performances with Hiroshima at the Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco.  Also had a chance to stop by my 10 year Stanford reunion while in the bay area.  It was great seeing faces I haven’ seen since graduation and reconnecting with classmates.

I also stopped by Chen Design Associates for a meeting and saw a prototype of the CD packaging for our new album “Ume in the Middle”.  I’m really excited about the new album and I’ll be posting more info as our release date gets finalized.

Tomorrow I’m headed back to LA and will be preparing for YOBU and working on the two recording projects in the works.  More soon…

Well Kris and Maz are back from Japan but both off gigging! Kris is on tour with Portland Taiko in Lake Placid, New York and Maz is performing with TAIKOPROJECT in the Tahoe area. I have a weekend off and am spending some time with family in San Luis Obispo. Next weekend I’ll be in San Francisco performing with Hiroshima at the Rrazz Room.

Our new studio album “Ume in the Middle” is nearing completion. We’re working with Chen Design Associates to design the CD packaging and they’ve come up with a great design. The album will be officially released in the beginning of next year but we’ll have some pre-release copies at YOBU, our upcoming annual home concert.

Just got back to LA from a weekend of more gigs with Hiroshima. We had a great series of gigs at the Birchmere, the Rams Head and the Tampa Performing Arts Center. The Birchmere and the Rams Head gigs have become a bit of a tradition for the band the the audiences are always great. In October Hiroshima is headed up to San Francisco for a week of gig at the Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko.

Maz and Kris are both in Tokyo preparing for Kris’ natori debut performance at ON Ensemble ’08: YOBU. I’m working on two recording projects for On Ensemble. We’re recording parts for a collaborative piece with Patrick Graham for his upcoming solo CD and I’ll be working on the EP4 an exclusive recording for our FoundatiOn Team.