Longview, WA - reGeneration - 3.19.11

This past weekend, the TAIKOPROJECT stormed the Pacific Northwest and visited the small-town of Longview, Washington. Longview is a quaint town about an hour north of Portland, OR, so this show was a special event for me personally, as it was the first show that my parents were able to see. The Suda family originates out of Portland, OR, so it was a relatively short journey to experience taiko a la TAIKOPROJECT.

Team DTK (Darren, Tricia, and Kevin) left LAX in the late afternoon on Thursday, the 17th, in order to land and prepare for the following day's school show. The flight was delayed 30min as we had to wait for a crewmember who was running late. The funny thing is, the stewardess announced their colleague's tardiness over the intercom, instead of making up some excuse for them. Good friend.

Darren, Yumi, and myself entertaining ourselves while we waited to take off.

After running across the Seattle Airport to catch our connecting flight (we actually had to catch a train to get to the other side of the airport), we landed at PDX in the late evening. We were greeted by our driver, Ned Piper, who was a Longview native that had deep roots in the town, dating back to its inception in the early 1900s. We learned all about Longview and the interesting story of the Columbia Theatre, which was saved inadvertently by the Mt. St. Helens eruption in May of 1980. Apparently, the theatre was set to be torn down, but the St. Helens eruption required use of the town's heavy machinery, which gave Longview locals enough time to rally and raise money to keep it open.

After it's extensive renovation, the theatre looks beautiful! So in a way...thanks Mt. St. Helens.

photo courtesy of universetoday.com	photo courtesy of cplinc.com

Friday's school show brought roughly 100 students ranging from middle school up through high school. We performed our shortened school show set and afterwards had the kids come up to learn some taiko basics. After the show, we spiked for Saturday's show and hit the road back to our hotel.

It was on Friday night that we discovered the perfect set of tights for Tomomi. We found them at Target while searching for clear tape. Aren't they perfect?!

The second half of the team (Jen, John, Scott, Liz, and Courtney) arrived later that night and after a short dinner at the local Shari's, we hit the hay.

Showtime. Saturday we were prepping all day for the big show. Right before we went on, we got a message from the Getty cast (the other half of the group was performing at the Getty Museum in LA earlier that same day). They had posted a fun-loving picture after their successful show.

In anticipation of our own performance, we decided to take our own picture. (see if you can match up who's who!)

For this show, I was particularly nervous because I wanted to make sure that the first reGen show my parents saw was a great experience. The show went pretty well, and the crowd was very receptive. We saw many of the students from the school show, which was nice because they got to see the full production.

Mom and Dad loved the show! While it could have been cleaner at points, I'm just glad they finally got to see TP in action. Almost three years of hearing about rehearsals and tours, but now they got to experience the show!

It was so nice to be back in the Pac. NW and to see my parents, but it was also nice to return to LA and SoCal. I'll always love going home to Portland, but my taiko family is here in LA!

Getty Center, Los Angeles

The March 19th weekend was a bustling weekend for TAIKOPROJECT. While half the cast traveled to Longview, Washington to do their reGeneration show (see Kevin's awesome post above), the other half stayed behind to perform at the beautiful Getty Center in Los Angeles as a part of its Family Festival series. There were many performances and shows that day, and we were one of many. We even had the pleasure of watching Chinese acrobats perform on stage just as we were loading in!

Despite FREEZING afternoon weather on a chilly and overcast day, the cast made performing in short sleeved and sleeveless tops look easy! The 1 hour show was great and everyone had a blast. Check out the pics, below (photo credit and special thanks to Hiro)!

The ending of Here We Go Now, which was our opening piece of the afternoon.

The debut of our brand new shishi! It kind of needs a haircut...but Brian did a great job with it nonetheless.

Our fue stars in Island Groove, Yuri and Brian! Plus, some support from the Groovettes: Keiko, Emily and me.

Many Sides was a fun piece (as it always is), and it helped us warm up in the cold!

This was definitely a "har har" candid moment that Hiro so cleverly captured. That's Andrew and Emily standing in matching poses...and I don't think they were doing it intentionally. Who was copying whom? I'll let you decide.

All in all, a really fun gig, especially for those of us who either had never been to the Getty, or had not visited in years. It's such a beautiful venue with great people, and a stunning view. DEF felt the TP love that weekend! (ALSO see Kevin's post for the second picture that came after this one...and the Longview cast's rendition. Haha)

Special thanks and TP love also to Hal and Lisa from Bombu for transporting members and equipment; Dok and Melissa for manning the Merchandise table; Hiro for photos, and Hiroka-san for helping us lug drums around! We couldn't have had a successful performance without you!

The Shishi Restoration Project - Part 1

TP recently acquired a shishi gashira (lion mask) on Ebay for a great price of $150! Normally, shishi gashira can be $2000 - $5000 brand new. It's a little smaller than our current shishi, but still a pretty good size. It was a little dingy too, so I thought it would be a fun project to refurbish it, and it would make it possible for TP to do a two-person shishimai. Also, thought it would be fun to document the process to share with our friends and fans! It isn't quite all finished yet, but we've made a lot of progress so far and wanted to share--so here we go...

Here's the back of the shishi. A small dowel holds the jaw part on the mask.

This shishi also had a tongue attached to the bottom of the mouth. The ears come off too.

In my years of doing shishimai, I have always enjoyed using shishi gashira that has a mouth that can open wide. Unfortunately, this shishi has a small mouth opening, but with a little surgery...we can make the mouth open wider. Here is the jaw as it was before surgery.

Here is the jaw post-surgery. Basically all I did was make an angled cut on the jaw to make more space for the jaw to open up.

Here's the original.

Here's the new mouth opening, increased maybe 1 1/2-2"! Next step...painting--

First coat--Krylon spray paint, fire engine red, with black accent areas taped over. Here's the jaw and the tongue.

With the tape taken off, old black accents exposed.


The whole mask after the paint job.

Tape removed.


After painting black accents and gold teeth.

From the side.

New handle attached on the back of the shishi gashira. Nothing too fancy, but hopefully will allow the shishi person to control the mask well.

Handle taped up with black tape. Next in Part 2, we'll bring in Yuri, who is making a new cape for the shishi, we'll add the hair, and then Shishi #2 will be good to go!

LunarFest Riverside

TAIKOPROJECT was really busy this past weekend! While one group was in Chicago freezing their tails off in the snow, the rest of us were playing for Riverside's First Annual Lunar New Year Festival. Happily, I was in the latter group with Maz, Courtney, Darren, Emily, Yumi, and Candice performing outside in the nice Downtown Riverside weather.

Emily, Yumi, and I arrived early so we walked around for a bit and saw a few of the performances, including traditional dancing, martial artists, and Chinese lion dancers. They also had a ping pong tournament going on. I wanted to play, but didn't want to embarrass myself! Then Yumi's food radar went off and led her directly to the eggrolls...

Once everyone arrived, we prepped our equipment backstage for our 1:45pm performance. After unloading, Maz and Emily needed to re-park their cars, but unfortunately finding parking was quite difficult. While Emily was still looking for a place to park, the festival staff alerted us that we might need to go on early! Luckily she found parking just in time and we went out to perform for a great audience.

After our first set, we had some spare time so we relaxed at the Coffee Bean and ate some Portos courtesy of Darren (thanks D!). We also got a chance to hang out with UCR Senryu members. They had performances at the opening and closing of the event. We later saw this amazing performer who could change his face mask in the blink of an eye. He would either turn around or flash his cape in front of his face for a fraction of a second and presto blingo -- new face! I thought one of the masks looked like Pikachu, but I could be wrong...

Our second set was at 4pm and we made a few adjustments to make it an even better performance. Thank you to the festival volunteers that were very helpful and assisted us in getting on and off stage! After packing up our equipment, it looked like the sun was setting soon. We were tired, but had a lot of fun. Maz especially had a blast because he loves his festivities!

On our walk back to the car, we passed by a booth that had some rabbits in honor of the Year of the Rabbit. These weren't ordinary rabbits though... these were the biggest rabbits I've ever seen! Some would say ginormous! I'm pretty sure the rabbits would beat up my dog. Thank you to LunarFest Riverside for having us. Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Celebrasia 2011: Year of the Rabbit

Before the sun has even started to peek over the horizon on Jan 29th, Bryan, Andrew, Tomomi, Jenny and Jen met at LAX to get on their flight to Chicago to perform at Northwestern University's Celebrasia. Celebrasia is an annual program that is hosted by Northwestern's own Taiwanese American Student's Club and the Chinese Student's Association to celebrate the lunar new year. This year, we were joined by other student performers and acts such as Chicago's Seven Stars Lion Dance, Youtube singer Jennifer Chung, the Shanghai Restoration Project and the Season 5 winners of America's Best Dance Crew -Poreotics.


After landing in Chicago, we drove straight to the Midwest Buddhist Temple to pick up some borrowed drums and also met up with Ryan who helped us out all day...thanks Ryan, you're awesome!! From the temple, we headed directly to Northwestern for our sound/tech rehearsal and then it was showtime! The crowd was jam packed and had great energy all night. We want to thank Tiffany Chang, TASC and CSA for bringing us out and to all the students for their hard work and great hospitality.


The next morning, we had some free time before out flight back to LA, so Andrew, Tomomi, Jenny and I decided to drive out to downtown Chicago to do some sightseeing. First we visited the Willis tower and took an elevator 103 floors up to their Skydeck. On the Skydeck, they have a glass box called the "Ledge" that extends about 4 feet out of the side of the building. We all took turns standing on the ledge and from 1,353 feet up in the sky, enjoyed the vast horizon and view of downtown Chicago. After Willis Tower, we walked around the streets of Chicago for a while then made a stop by Millennium Park to visit the Cloud Gate sculpture before heading back to the airport. I was told that it was fairly warm for Chicago weather while we were there (and it seemed that way as we saw students walking around in shorts and shirtless on campus), but thinking back to our frozen, shivering bodies while walking through the city, it was apparent to me that you can't get acclimated to colder weather like that in just 2 days =)


Thank you again to Northwestern's Taiwanese American Student's Club and the Chinese Student's Association for bringing us out and thank you to Chicago for a great time. Can't wait to visit again!

Loading in, loading out...

I often joke around that 90% of my job as a taiko drummer is driving stuff around--loading and unloading equipment. 10% of my time I am actually drumming. While moving and packing drums has been pretty normal--we have Toni Yagami chudaiko bags, and other cases for shime and okedotaiko, what often causes us to make a ridiculous amount of trips back and forth to the van are our numerous stands. Shime stands, okedo stand pieces, chu stands, percussion tables, etc, etc. After about a decade of doing this, I think I've finally figured out a simple solution, and I am very grateful that Toni is humoring me and helping make some STAND BAGS! Here are some sketches and ideas that we have. If you have the same problem lugging stands around, maybe Toni can make some stand bags for you, too! (after she does ours)

Here are some of my basic ideas--first, here we have three shime stands that fold up and can stack together pretty compact.



Normally, we'd just pick one or two up in one hand and carry them from van to stage and back. What this and the other stand bags are going to do that is going to save us tons of time (I think) is that we can pack multiple stands and carry three at a time over our shoulders, which means our hands are still free to carry other stuff. We're ordering two for now, which means we should be able to transport 6 stands, which should be plenty.



We also have two more designs, and anyone out there who has Asano Taiko okedos and stands might find these intriguing. As some of you may know, Asano Taiko's okedo stands break down into two pieces. A piece shaped like an "I" and another piece shaped like an "H". If you're like TAIKOPROJECT, every now and then we take the wrong sized stand, or mismatched, or one time we left a stand piece at a gig. Sigh. These okedo stand bags we hope will make it so none of these things happen, AND that we can transport them and protect them better.

This first photo is the "I" pieces. There's a caster on one of them, but we're going to take it off--



Here's the bag sketch. Also, there will be some padding on the top flap, because we have had to repair a number of pegs, since they're kind of fragile. This one also slings over the shoulder, making it easy to carry along with other pieces of equipment.



Finally, we have our okedo "H" stand pieces. These come in various sizes, but are all pretty close in their dimensions. Again, they sling over the shoulder and will also protect the stands when they're packed away.



Here's the bag sketch--



Toni has just started working on these, but I am really excited to see how they'll turn out. When they're done, we'll post photos on our blog!

Oshogatsu, Part 2

After a great New Year's day performance, TP continued its Oshogatsu celebrations on Sunday, January 2nd with a performance at JANM (the Japanese American National Museum), located in the heart of Little Tokyo.

Despite some disappointing weather (2011 opened with beautiful, sunny weather on the 1st but gave LA a taste of more rain on the 2nd), JANM continued its family celebrations to ring in the New Year with folks from all over the city. We were the last performance of the day, closing out the day's festivities.

We performed a fun set, and I found that the rain turned out to serve some good after all. It brought everyone together indoors, and while performing for large, spread out audiences are exciting too, the second floor of the museum provided a warm, intimate space. There's something about having your audience so physically close that adds extra enjoyment to a performance. As one of the brand new trainees myself, it was, no doubt, a good stage experience to add to my personal repertoire.

All in all, a great way to kick off the year.

Enjoying a bite-sized piece of warm, soft kinako mochi post-performance doesn't hurt either. (Thanks, Kodama Taiko!)

New Year's Taiko Gigs

Happy New Year, folks! I hope you all had a chance to open the new year with lots of food, friends, family, and fun – and also with an appropriate amount of alliteration.

It’s a busy time for TaikoProject so far this year. On New Year’s Day, we were very pleased to perform at Weller Court in downtown LA’s Little Tokyo. The performance opened with an improvised collaboration with an impressive and dynamic Ikebana presentation (we're talking huge bamboo...not your typical New Year's Day table centerpiece), and later we performed a set for a packed courtyard crowd of New Year’s revelers and spectators.

We’ve got several other gigs coming up soon, so if you’re feeling the need for some TP taiko magic to set your year on the path to awesomeness, head on over to our website to find out where you can see us next!

HTV commercial shoot in San Pedro!

Happy New Year everyone! Looks like 2011 is going to be a very busy and exciting year for TAIKOPROJECT! Just wanted to tell you guys a about a gig we had last month.

On December 7^th, TP was asked to help shoot a commercial for HTV, an MTV-esque Latin American TV channel.Our call time was super early! 6:00AM! The commercial was shot at the Korean Bell of Friendship in San Pedro. When we got there it dark and foggy, but people were already running around building the set. As the sun rose, the Korean Bell transformed into some kind of feudal Asian palace. At one point we heard, “Bring anything that looks Asian!!!!!” being yelled across the park. Ceramic urns, tea pots, blankets, pillows, and random Mardi Gras beads were hurried over and strewn around the bell.Taiko players, ninjas, a Japanese/Filipino emperor, and Chinese lion dancers converged at the Korean Bell to create some mutant freak mix of Asian culture. Several hours later the set was complete, everyone was in place, and we were ready to begin shooting!

Now would be a good time for me to tell you the premise of the commercial....which I find hilarious....

A buff, mean-looking Asian Emperor sits in his palace surrounded by scantily glad ninja girls (because we all know being a ninja is so much easier when you are wearing close to nothing). Ferocious taiko playing can be heard in the background. *ominous drumroll... A voluptuous "Latin Bombshell" arrives at said Asian palace in a black luxury sedan with her two ripped Latino man-friends. Asian Emperor sends his ninja girls to do battle with them. Lead ninja girl cuts half of Latin Bombshell's dress off. Tension rises. *CUE SALSA MUSIC *CUE LION DANCERS *CUE SPONTANEOUS DANCE PARTY!!! Ninja girl enjoys a passionate dance with Latino man.... Asian Emperor shares a moment with Latin Bombshell... you get the idea. If only all the world's problems could be solved by spontaneously bursting into dance....Based on the other commercials in this series, I’m assuming at some point in time a gigantic hot air balloon with the HTV logo on it will rip the temple from the ground and take us all on a happy, dance-filled ride into the unknown (I’m serious.)

Playing taiko was fun as usual. The drums were so loud that the production crew had to continuously yell at us to stop playing… Bryan, Brian, and I played a pretty simple arrangement thrown together earlier that morning. Eventually we spiced things up and played along to some salsa music (for the dance party). Bryan and Bryan has some close-up shots taken of them with an extremely expensive crane-mounted camera. Hopefully those make it into the commercial somewhere!

Most of the day was actually spent waiting for the fog to lift. The fog ended up putting the shoot many hours behind schedule. To make matters worse, it was absolutely freezing outside! Fortunately, someone was there to give us our jackets between shots. Some 12 hours after we arrived, the sun was beginning to set, the temperature had dropped even more, and the crew was scrambling to get some last shots in. There was lots of stress and yelling in those last 30 minutes, but after we wrapped we got to enjoy a nice sunset.

A long day, but very fun nonetheless. The three of us met some very interesting people and had some good laughs. Here are some pictures from our day:

Hiroshima's Spirit of the Season Holiday Show!

About two months ago, I got an email from June and Dan Kuramoto of the popular Asian American band, Hiroshima, asking me if I'd be interested in playing an opening koto set for their annual Spirit of the Season Holiday Show. They stumbled across "Seiza" from TAIKOPROJECT's Surrounding Suns CD and fell in love with it. To quote June, she exclaimed, "My heart is exploding!" It's quite an honor to be asked to open for Hiroshima, so I couldn't pass it up!

I had no idea what to perform other than "Seiza". Since I haven't written any songs with just koto, I didn't have much to choose from. While performing with Jodaiko at UC Irvine, I co-wrote a koto/taiko piece entitled "Enkai" with my good friend Michael Gusukuma. Hoping that I still remembered how to play the song, I decided to play "Enkai" as the second number of my set.

I was so excited when Darren, Jen, Maz, Tomomi, and Yuri agreed to accompany me, especially since they are such amazing taiko players that I admire both as musicians and as my friends. They put forth a great deal of effort to learn Enkai and they really transformed the song by adding some TP flair to it!

THE DAY OF THE SHOW:

We arrived at the Japan America Aratani Theater in Little Tokyo, welcomed by the sounds of Hiroshima wrapping up their sound check. At that moment, everything was incredibly nostalgic for me. Every other year when I was young (from about age 4 to age 12) I used to come to the JAT to perform koto concerts with the Koto String Society. At that time, June would perform with us and I would always admire the finesse with which she played. She was, and definitely still is, my koto idol and a dear family-friend. Watching her rehearse with Hiroshima brought me back to those days when I was young. It was such a warm feeling!

After our sound check, we ate some delicious food with the band. We spent a good amount of time hanging out with Shoji Kameda (former musical director of TAIKOPROJECT and composer of "Omiyage"), which was really nice. It was my first time formally meeting him! To be honest, I was a little star-struck...I hope I didn't act too much like a fan!

Finally it was show time! We performed "Seiza", "Enkai", and "Many Sides". Everything went pretty smoothly and it was a lot of fun! I could hear my small fan-base of family and friends cheering for us in the audience, thanks to my mom who invited almost everyone she knew (she's a huge TP fan).

It's been my dream to perform koto at a gig like this. I'm particularly grateful that I got to share the stage with my TAIKOPORJECT buddies! This was definitely a performance to remember :)