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The flight from Ulaanbaatar to DC over was kind of crazy.  We left at 12:20am Ulaanbaatar time, flew to Seoul where we had a 6 hour lay over before the 14 hour flight to DC.  When we got into DC it was only 11am the same day and we had to make it through the entire day without crashing.  In DC we had two performances and a workshop with the local taiko group Nen Daiko.  The Nen Daiko folks were gracious enough to let us stay with them during our time in DC and a big thank you goes out to Ms. Nakamura for the great breakfasts!  Being on the road with a sizable group speaking three different languages can be chaotic so it was nice to have the stability of a nice breakfast in the morning!

Our first performance was at the Japanese Information and Cultural Center and the next day we performed at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage where they have free performances everyday the entire year!  They also broadcast the performances via the internet for free and you can watch archived performances at the Kennedy Center’s website.  The performances were fun though I was personally fighting a cold brought on by the tiring travel schedule.  The next day most of the ensemble took the train to New York while Tetsuro, Kaoru and myself stayed behind to give a workshop to Nen Daiko.  Kaoru gave them fue lessons, Tetsuro taught katsugi technique and I gave them a few pointers on Omiyage a piece that I composed for Taikoproject and have released under a free art license.  The basic idea is that the song is free for anyone who wants to learn and perform it with the only rule being you have to give the song away in the same spirit it was received in.  Anyone that knows the song is also encouraged to teach others.  It’s been a surprisingly successful idea a quick youtube search yields a good dozen or so videos of groups performing or practicing the song.

Kelvin and I just finished our workshop with Denver Taiko and Mirai Daiko. We taught them “Omiyage” a piece that I originally wrote for TAIKOPROJECT and have since released under a free art license as a gift to the North American Taiko community. Bryan Yamami first conceived of a piece called “Omiyage” for TAIKOPROJECT (re)generation that TAIKOPROJECT would workshop to the various communities it would visit. I have Kris to thank for expanding the “Omiyage” concept in terms of releasing it under a free art license. My work and On Ensemble’s music and recordings are released under a more restrictive creative commons, attribution non-commercial, share-alike license, but I often have interesting conversations with Kris regarding free art and admire his commitment to the concept. I wanted to do something under the free art license and “Omiyage” was a logical choice. We’re working on putting together more free art work for the taiko community including more pieces and programs like “30 days to better shime”.

Watching “Omiyage” grow and take on a life of it’s own has been very rewarding. Yuta Kato did a lot to refine the choreography of the piece and spread it through workshops from Long Island to Hawai’i. Maz and the TAIKOPROJECT cast continues to refine their version of the piece and I keep finding more and more YouTube videos of groups performing the piece. There is even a group from Japan posting “Omiyage” videos.

Kelvin and I would like to send out a huge thank you to Aiko and Yuji Kimura for taking such great care of us during our short stay. Denver Taiko and Mirai Daiko did and fantastic job and learning the piece and I’m looking forward to seeing where they take “Omiyage” and who they teach it to!