A Missed Opportunity

Yesterday was Saturday and I had to work. Usually I can leave work on Saturdays around 1:30, but today I had to stay until 4. Not only did it force me to miss JIGEN practice, but I also missed out on a (perhaps) once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. At least my wife was able to participate in it.

What was it? It was a free, private workshop by Mr. Yoshikazu Fujimoto of Kodo. When I say private, I mean that it was not open to the public, but rather only a few members of groups studying at Asano Taiko. I guess altogether there were about 20 people there. If you follow the link on Mr. Fujimoto's name, you'll know this already, but if you are too lazy, here are the main details on him:
He is one of the founding members of Kodo
He is usually the featured player for "Odaiko" and "Yatai Bayashi" at Kodo performances
He is currently the most senior member of Kodo
this year, he'll be 58 years old!

So it was pretty frustrating to me to have to stay at work while one of the taiko world's greats was giving a workshop. At least my wife was able to go and she will have to give me the details.

Today I can make up for missing the workshop a little bit because we will get to see a short concert in the afternoon. In a sort of indirect way, this concert is also related to one of Kodo's founding members, Mr. Eitetsu Hayashi. Mr. Hayashi, does not perform with Kodo anymore and mostly does solo work on the Odaiko.　　He also has a group of several young men, which he has hand picked and trained from all over Japan. They are called "Fu un no kai" (風雲の会) When he has a performance where he needs more than just his solo Odaiko, he will assemble them to play with him. They also perform in concerts without him. In fact, they were a guest at this past summer's Exstasia. This afternoon, they'll be here in Kanazawa again. We will take our daughter to go and see them perform. It's kind of a short concert (only about an hour) and the tickets are quite reasonable (only 1500 yen).