Odaiko New England’s Artistic Director Juni Kobayashi performed the first movement of her ambitious new composition “Ganesh Awakens” at Taiko Ten at the 2011 North American Taiko Conference.  Juni’s piece was the only solo piece performed at Taiko Ten and it received an overwhelmingly positive reception. If you were not able to make it to the conference this year [...]

Spring is the busy season for Odaiko New England. It’s the time of year when everyone wants to have taiko at their outdoor festivals. It’s also my personal busy season… I know I’m not the only taiko player to have a difficult time balancing work, life, and taiko, so I imagine my spring will sound familiar to a lot of folks out there.

It all started in April, right after we got our new ONE jackets and other gear…

TAO review: Berklee Performance Center, Thursday, March 18, 7:30pm Taiko performances can give audiences the impression that taiko and martial arts are closely-related disciplines, if not fully intertwined as one art. The group TAO seeks to obliterate any distinction between the two while putting on a dynamite concert. Since I have no background whatsoever in [...]

My first live KODO concert experience started with a pleasant surprise. By being at the right place at the right time, my son and I got to go backstage at Symphony Hall before the concert and meet some of the KODO people. One performer was practicing shime-daiko with bachi that were tapered almost to a [...]

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve been on a blind date – afterall, what would Mr. Lau say? Yet that’s exactly what meeting Kodo today feels like! Not only do I get to meet members of Kodo, I’ll be driving some of them to our reception after their Boston concert. Yesterday, I washed [...]

It may have been the first time anyone has participated in a jam-session Miyake with Kodo while wearing an LBD (Little Black Dress). It was certainly the first time I observed such a thing. For sure, a Kodo drummer pounding out a wild, macho Miyake on one side of the drum, with a poised, elegant [...]

This past weekend was a whirlwind of taiko events, and has already been written about in one or two other blog posts. However, being the sort of person I am, who always has to insert her opinion into the conversation, I’m writing yet another. Enjoy! For me, the weekend stressed the importance of Attitude in [...]

I just had a whirlwind weekend full of rhythm, attending a concert each day for the past three days. Friday Night: San Jose Taiko in Keene, NH Wow! One of the early numbers was a piece involving passing accented rhythms back and forth between two pairs of drummers.  I hope I can develop timing like [...]

Several members of ONE trekked to Keene, NH, to witness the cyclone known as San Jose Taiko rock the Colonial Theater. ONE has a direct connection to SJT in the person of Meg Suzuki; before she left ONE to join SJT’s artistic staff, Meg-sensei taught the classic taiko song Yatai Bayashi and more to me [...]

Now I’ve seen it all! Odaiko New England just concluded an awesome week hanging out with Shoji, Maz, Kris and Kelvin from On Ensemble, one of the most cutting-edge and dynamic taiko fusion groups out there. I was blown away by their speed, technique, musicality, complexity, precision– but most of all by their interpretation of [...]