Asian American Music Festival '10

Yesterday, Liz and I performed at the Asian American Music Festival as part of the Pan Asian Arkestra, which was put together for this show by Gary Fukushima. The festival is a 3 day event featuring Asian American music of various genres. The event took place at JANM's Democracy Forum.

The festival has 5 "movements" and we were a part of the second movement. It started off with Gary's GF3 Trio, featuring Gary on piano, JP Maramba on bass, and Miles Senzaki on drums. Liz and I sat in the audience and watched their performance. So awesome!!

They were followed by Jon Jang's solo piano performance. It was amazing to watch him perform!

Then, we were up. The Pan Asian Arkestra performed Jon Jang's Reparations Now! Concerto for Jazz Ensemble and Taiko (which was composed in 1988 to bring attention to the Japanese American reparations movement), and Hitomi Oba's new piece, The Generation Tree. We shared the stage with the Trio, Hitomi, Ian Vo, Michael Birnbryer, Josh Aguiar, and Nick DePinna.

What an awesome experience! It was an honor to perform with a group of such amazing musicians!

As I stated here, it was the first time that I collaborated with a Jazz ensemble, so I was a little bit nervous at first. Not only that, Liz and I had to read music with Western notation (we mainly learn taiko music through kuchi-shoga). It's a good thing both of us played piano and flute! It's been like over 10 years for me....and it was like riding a bike....ha! We practiced and practiced (thanks Gary and Hitomi for meeting up with us to go over the music!) and we became familiar with the music.

I had a lot of fun at this performance and was kind of sad when it was all over!! We made new friends and I'm totally inspired! As we loaded our drums and left the venue, Liz and I talked about how awesome it would be if we could do something like this again some time.

Thanks Gary for bringing us on board! And thanks Paul (Festival Director) for putting together a great event!

Fun fact: one of the people working on sound at the theater was Joel Mankey, a former TP member! :)

Another fun fact: Liz and I shook hands with Jake Shimabukuro!

A few photos!

Gary's GF3 Trio performing.

Jon Jang on piano

Me and Liz with Gary

Happy 60th Birthday, Mrs. Deguchi!

Last Saturday a few of us helped Mrs. Deguchi (a.k.a. Courtney's mommy) celebrate her 60th birthday at the Friendly Hills Country Club in Whittier, CA. The guests were so elegant (especially the birthday girl), the food was delicious, and the atmosphere was amazing! It really was a lot of fun and a great way to spend the evening. Plus, now we all know Courtney and her family a little bit better! :)

PS - if any of you want beauty tips on how to look 40 when you're 60, ask Courtney's mom. Seriously. :)

This Saturday: Asian American Music Festival!

Taikoproject was invited by Gary Fukushima to perform this weekend at the Asian American Music Festival with the Pan Asian Arkestra!

Liz and I have been studying the music and we rehearsed on Tuesday with everyone! It's going to be awesome. For me, personally, it's the first time that I'm collaborating with a Jazz ensemble, so I'm super excited.

We'll be performing 2 songs: Jon Jang's Concerto for Jazz Ensemble and Taiko, and Hitomi Oba's new piece, The Generation Tree. Hitomi actually played a little taiko at UCLA with KYNK and Yukai Daiko and knows some of us in TP!

Asian American Music Festival will take place this weekend (10/15 to 10/17).Our 'movement' will perform on Saturday, October 16.Click here for ticket information!! We hope you can come!

Here are 2 photos from the rehearsal!

(re)generation show in Torrance recap!!

Hello TAIKOPROJECT friends, family, and followers! Here is a recap post about our (re)generation show on October 2nd, 2010 at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center, not from a performers perspective, but from the stagehand trainee perspective.

The day started very early with many of the guys heading over to our studio in Long Beach to pick up any remaining drums and equipment we needed for the show. But most importantly we needed a lot of strong hands to get our Ohiradaiko (weighing over 330 pounds!) loaded up and ready for the show.

Once the entire cast was present at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center, we all helped setting up equipment, unpacking the drums, and prepping for the show. One of tasks some of the trainees were assigned was to setup the risers for the show, with the help of some older members we managed to set them up just fine. The risers added some great level changes to the show and it looked really good. I also got the chance to retie some of the okedo (roped taiko drums, normally played with a sling) which I have never done before. It was a surprisingly difficult task causing me to break a sweat, but I guess it didn't help either that is was progressively getting warmer outside too. Once all the equipment was set it was time to start spiking the performance and we moved all of the drums to the stage.

Photo Courtesy of Tomomi Hongo

Once on stage the cast practiced the songs for concert while lighting and crew were setting up backstage. This was one of my first experiences of a big show with taiko on stage and I've never realized how much goes on during the setup. For example when the stagehands want to alert the performers that something will be lowered to the stage, they say "(whatever they are adjusting) coming in" at which point all performers have to repeat the call so the stagehands know the performers know its coming in. After spiking and making final adjustments to the show, it was only a matter of time before show time.

Photo Courtesy of Tomomi Hongo

Once all the equipment was prepped on stage and backstage, costumes were set, and everyone was warmed up, the show was ready to kick off. It was so exciting even though I spent most of the time backstage prepping equipment for the upcoming songs along with my fellow trainees. When we had the chance we would get to watch a glimpse of the show from the sides of the stage and it was so cool to see the energy not only from the performers but also from the audience's applause. What I also enjoyed was the unspoken dialogues between the performers off stage, since we had to be so quiet when adjusting equipment a simple smile or sign of acknowledgment seemed to say "keep up the good work" or "let's keep doing our best!". I think the highlight of my night backstage was when we had a little bit of stage time when we took off some of the drums for the finale song "Here We Go Now!", sure it might have been only a couple of seconds, it was better than nothing. :)

Great job with an amazing show TAIKOPROJECT and this was definitely an educational show for my many performances in the future. Thanks to all the friends and family who came to watch the show and I hope you enjoyed the performance as much as I did. Being a local performance it was great to have so much support from the home crowd as well as other taiko groups in the area, thank you so much!! If you missed this performance of (re)generation, TAIKOPROJECT will be hitting the road for our next (re)generation show which will be in Longview, Washington on March 19, 2011!! Thanks for reading and see you next time TAIKOPROJECT followers!!

Photo Courtesy of Tomomi Hongo

Performance with 30 Seconds to Mars at the Epicenter

Last weekend TAIKOPROJECT had another opportunity to perform with rock band, 30 Seconds to Mars. The cast members drove down to the Epicenter in Fontana. It was EXTREMELY hot. Right when we got out the car we were sweating bullets. Luckily, Shannon Leto, the drummer from 30 STM let us borrow their dressing room where they had air conditioning and fresh fruits! We spent the time preparing for the show although we weren't really sure what we were suppose to play until moments before the show. But...it was so much fun! We played for their opening song, "Escape" and the last song "Kings and Queens." The last song was especially fun. Jared Leto, the main singer for the show allowed a number of audiences to gather on the stage to sing and dance along. People gathered and rocked out! TP played along with the music and shared some awesome moments with the fans. It was awesome. Pictures from the performance will be up soon!