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We had a great performance at the Green Show today! Thanks to Claudia, Jess and all the Green Show volunteers.  It was great being back in Ashland and it’s starting to feel like a second home now that Kelvin is living there and we find ourselves performing there for the second time in two months.  We even made the Green Show poster complete with a nice shot of the LA skyline.

We’ll be spending the next couple of days in Mt. Shasta getting some creative rehearsal time in with Kelvin before we head back down to Los Angeles.  More later!

We had a great sold-out performance tonight at the Oregon Bach Festival.  Our stay in Eugene has been fantastic and we’d like to thank John Evans, Michael Anderson and the OBF staff for bringing us to their amazing festival.  We’d also like to thank the great theater and sound crew at the Hult Center for making our concert go so smoothly.  Also a huge thank you goes our to our lighting designer Eileen Cooley for all of her artistry and work.  And last but definitely not least thank you to the members of Portland Taiko who helped us pack up and load out!

Tomorrow we head down to Ashland for a performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Green Show.  More later!

We are currently in the beautiful city of Eugene OR for the Oregon Bach Festival.  Yesterday we performed at the opening of On the Road: Two Visions of the Tokaido at the University of Oregon’s Jordon Schnitzer Museum.  We spent today in the theater preparing for tomorrow’s concert and got a nice write up in the Eugene Register-Guard.

Tonight we’re going to watch Helmuth Rilling conduct a performance of Joseph Haydn’s The Creation at the Oregon Bach Festival.  Should be great concert!

Being on tour is a lot of packing and unpacking.  During this last trip we gradually figured out a way to fit everything and leave the passengers a bit of wiggle room.  Here is a montage of our first pack.  Hope I remember the final version!

Well we’re back from tour… and I’m still stuffed! We went to my very favorite restaurant in the whole world: Garden Fresh! Steve Sano took On Ensemble and a few Stanford Taiko members.  It was the most I’d eaten in weeks… I couldn’t stop!  The “#18 Orange Vegetarian Beef” was the highlight of the evening.  As Shoji says, “It’s like an upgrade to the real thing!”  It was the best meal of tour. Thank you Steve!

If you’re ever in the Mountain View area, check it out!

We had a great performance at Askenaz last night!  A huge thank you goes out to the great crew at Ashkenaz and to all of our friends and taiko family who turned out for the show.  It was a great gig to end the tour on.

Today we have a presentation at Stanford for “Perspectives in North American Taiko” the first university level course on the history and practice of taiko in North America.  After the presentation it’s back to Ashland for Kelvin and Los Angeles for the rest of us.

After Tahoe, we had a nice stopover in Placerville.  We had no idea where Placerville was or what to expect.  It turned out to be a pleasant surprise!  It was an old, quaint town with lots of character.  The Cozmic Cafe was a great place.  Good food and good people.  Thanks to Chris for bringing us out and thank you to Jazz and Dan for housing us in your beautiful home!

The next morning, we drove to Stanford University, Kris and Shoji’s alma mater.  Kris taught a timing workshop to Stanford Taiko.  What a great bunch of kids!  They learn so fast.  After the workshop, we had lunch together and Blair, one of the members, asked Kris what his major was.  Kris said he majored in English, but the joke was that all of the Blair’s teachers still talk about how Kris and Shoji’s major was taiko!

We just came back from dinner with the Arts for the Schools presenters (Melanie and Katy) at Rubicon Pizza in Truckee.  Thank you to Ray for a wonderful meal!

We had four school shows in the past two days at North Tahoe High School and Truckee High School where they bused in elementary students from around the area.  The kids have been great!  Tomorrow, we have our concert at North Tahoe High School.  Please come check it out!

Yesterday, I took a walk around Kings Beach where we’re staying and had some fun taking pictures with my shadow on the beach.  A bit of trivia:  Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America and it is the second deepest at 1,645 feet!  Crater Lake in Oregon is the deepest at 1,945 feet deep.