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Thank you for your donation Kim!
Kim Nakashima becomes the 101st FoundatiOn Team donor!

Hi all.  Long time no blog!  I’ve had a nice, busy schedule in January.  Two gigs out in Vegas and a big show in Riverside with TAIKOPROJECT kept me on my toes for the new year.

Over the holidays I went home to Mt. Shasta and visited my parents.  During my stay, we went over to Mark Miyoshi’s to see the new, huge odaiko he’s building.  If you’ve never met Mark, he’s one of the most gracious, great, spiritual people that I know.  He builds taiko from scratch all by himself.  In Japan, you have workers who do each step of building a taiko.  One person who carves the inside out, one person who cures the skin, one person who puts the skin on, etc.  Mark does it all to amazing perfection.  He and his wife, Luisa, have chickens, a bee colony (of which I am enjoying the awesome honey from), make herbal tinctures, among other things.  Mark has been like an uncle to Shoji and myself.  The odaiko he’s building is the biggest he’s built and is part of a bunch of taiko he is building for display at The World’s First Global Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, AZ opening in April, 2010.  Congratulations Mark!  This is a huge honor and it’s a huge honor to have Mark as part of my life.

Thank you to Stacey Nakasone for her donation to the 2009 FoundatiOn Team! Stacey is our 100th donor this year and brings the grand total to $11,375!

Thank you again to all of this year’s donors! I will have updates from the hands-on workshops as they happen over the next few months. Thanks to the generosity of the FoundatiOn Team, On Ensemble is providing eleven taiko workshops to public school students!

It kind of had to happen sooner or later.  On Ensemble has a new Facebook page.  Hopefully we’ll actually keep this one up.  We don’t have a great record with the social media thing but hey it’s a new year and anything is possible.

I assembled a set of Five Fish preamps for Shoji and they turned out really well!  The preamps sound fantastic and thanks to the high quality of the kit and the great support offered by Five Fish, the build process was very enjoyable.  Here’s a time-lapse video of the construction!  Photos and a review of the kit follows the break…

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Happy New Year! The beginning of a new year is a hopeful and reflective time. Last year was filled with some amazing experiences. I was blessed with the opportunity to collaborate with amazing artists from around the world and got to perform in new places like Yogyakarta and Ulaanbator. I started two new musical ventures: Khoomei Taiko Ensemble and Stereo Alchemy. I also took a big step toward full adulthood and bought my first home!

It was also a great year for On Ensemble. We kicked off the year with the release of Ume in the Middle and followed it up with several successful tours and a lot of great performances. Some personal highlights from 2009 include performing out in Brattleboro with Patrick Graham, performing at the California Worldfest, and performing at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts with the Kenny Endo Taiko Ensemble. Another high point was facilitating the Summer Taiko Institute, performing at Taiko Jam and catching up with the taiko community at the North American Taiko Conference. The year also ended nicely with a great works in progress concert and our most successful FoundatiOn Team drive ever!

I’m looking forward to all the new opportunities and experiences 2010 will bring.  So far it’s off to great start.  Next week we’re starting our FoundatiOn Team funded hands-on workshops for Glassell Park Elementary and at the end of the month I’m headed to my first Grammys!

We’ve been working with puppeteer director Sam Koji Hale on a short film set to Yamasong. I just saw the rough cut and it looks amazing! Sam has posted some short clips of what his done on his facebook page. Check it out!

The following donors made contributions to the FoundatiOn Team, bringing the total number of donors this year to 99! Will we have a 100th donor?..

Thank you for your generosity!

Chikako Hara
David Wells
Tetsuo Uyeda