about

music

video

calendar

contact

David and I taught our second practice workshop yesterday and had a great time with Jodaiko! Thank you to Katy and the gang for being our guinea pigs. David and I feel much better prepared and we’re inspired by the energy and abilities of everyone. Next up… the real deal… at Conference!

David Wells and I have been busily preparing for our Bon Taiko Bonanza workshop at Taiko Conference. We’re trying some ambitious, new things, so we asked local taiko groups if they’d have us for a practice workshop. Last night, members of Kyodo, Yukai, Psycho Taiko, Kazan, and others joined us for a run-through. It was great fun and with a bit more practice, David and I will pull off the crazy Comprehensive Choreography Correction Clinic demo.

Tomorrow, Jodaiko is hosting our second practice workshop at UCI. If you’d like to join us, let me know!

Free Slant Taiko Workshop!
Practice session for Taiko Conference workshop, Bon Taiko Bonanza.
Friday, July 22, 2011
7pm-9:30pm
UCI campus
RSVP kris at OnEnsemble dot org for more information

Sunday, Jan 9, 2011
9:30am – 11:30am
$30
Renate Albertsen-Marton Gallery – The Village@Gureje
886 Pacific Street
Brooklyn, NY 11238
(Between Pacific and Washington Aves in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn)
RSVP: kaoru -at- watanabekaoru -dot- com

On Ensemble will be teaching Omiyage at Kaoru’s space in Brooklyn, with Maz assisting. A rare opportunity to learn the piece from Shoji, Omiyage’s original composer, as well as Maz, one of Omiyage’s great practitioners!

At the end of the year and into 2011, On Ensemble will be making a cross-country trek to New York City. We’ll be attending the APAP booking conference and performing with Patrick Graham in Montreal. We will be visiting taiko groups all along the way and have a host of new workshops we’re really excited about!

workshop_offerings_2011.pdf

Kris and I both taught workshops this past weekend in UCLA at Yukai Daiko’s Taiko Camp.  Every year, before the school year starts, Yukai holds a taiko camp to which Kris and I both taught at last year as well.  This year, I did one of my newer workshops called “How to Kiai Confidently While Playing Taiko”.  Kiai are hard because it’s another thing added to the form of Taiko.  You’ve got your stance, you’ve got your beats, you’ve got your movements, and then your kiai or vocal shouts.  It was fun, but my voice was all tired from the day before at Chico!  I was very impressed with Yukai this past year and I’m excited to see their advancements this year.  Special thanks to Jessica and Isabella for organizing everything and to Danny for the following picture.

On Ensemble had a fabulous time facilitating the 2009 Summer Taiko Institute!  32 participants from around North America spent three days with us learning On Ensemble’s approach to taiko and a new Free Music taiko piece composed for the community.

Here are a few photos from the three days!

Thank you to(the participants), Darren, Taiko Conference Advisory Board for making STI possible!

Joy, one of our fearless participants, has scanned the score for each part of the song.  The written music is a bit rough, but you can find these scanned images here.

Random videos have been popping up as well!

Chikara Daiko invited me to give the group a workshop last night and we had a great time! The theme was “sensitivity”, and we covered shime and nagado basics.  I taught them On Ensemble’s current arrangement of Renshuu.

Chikara is a *great* group of folks and it was an honor and pleasure to be there. Thank you Chikara Daiko!

(click for larger ver)

We’ve had an amazing response to the Summer Taiko Institute thus far.  We received an overwhelming number of qualitfied applications and are really looking forward to working with a great group of participants from all across North America come August.

The Summer Taiko Institute is also being featured on a new website CreateCulture.org that I think many of you will be interested in.  It’s a social networking site for those interested in the arts and there are ton of listings of interesting events and workshops from New York to Los Angeles.