Asano Taiko Spring Recital March 8, 2009

I went to get my haircut yesterday. It's nice and short now. My friends and co-workers now know what my short haircut means. As soon as I come to work the next day, they ask me, "So when is your taiko concert?"

This time it is this Sunday afternoon (March 8) I will play in three groups, Mayumi (my wife) will play in two and my daughter will play in one. It will be a busy day. We'll really have to give it our best, though. This time there will be a lot of people coming to see it, including some of my students, co-workers and my parents have even traveled all the way from Michigan to see the performance. (Well, that wasn't the only reason they came.)

So this past week has been filled with taiko practices driven by the thought: "This is our last chance to practice altogether before the big event." Our most challenging group, Jigen, does not feel very well prepared. I am certain that all of us have made improvements since our October debut, but the song we took on to learn for this recital is significantly more challenging, in that for half of it, all 9 of us are playing shime taiko. And if you are a regular reader of this blog, or a taiko player, you will already know that getting 9 shime taiko to play in exact unison is not an easy task.

The other group my wife and I play in together is Shin-Matto Bayashi. This time around it certainly will be "shin" (new) because for the first time in a long time, we will be playing with Shamisen players, which will add a nice melodic element to the piece. The piece also calls for a flute part and is we actually only perform half of it. When played in full, it is maybe more than 20 minutes long and for these recitals, there are so many groups that need to play, each one is limited to 10 minutes. The time restraints, as well as a decline in members in recent years, has led to a stripped down version of Shin-Matto Bayashi. Therefore, it has been quite a while since anyone has seen it performed with the Shamisen players. Maybe next time we can add back the flute parts.

The group I play in by myself, Yume Mitai is playing the same song we have played the past three concerts, but this time around, many people have switched parts. I moved to Shime Taiko, along with two other nagado players and one of the Odaiko players. Two of the original shime taiko players moved to the nagado part, the other one moved to Odaiko. One other nagado player also moved to Odaiko. With so many people moving around to different parts, it is also likely that, although this is the fourth time we have performed this piece, it will probably sound a bit different.

I was going to write about the advice I got from Yamada sensei about playing shime daiko in a group, but I think I will save that for next time, as this has already gotten longer than I had intended.

It's a Beautiul Day!

It's a brisk, October morning, there's a beautiful sunrise and today is a taiko concert. There is something about performing that I really enjoy. I'll be performing with three groups today, playing Odaiko for two of them. Mayumi will be playing in two groups. Can't wait.

Concert

Our Sunday performance was more or less a success. I was pretty exhausted afterwards, though. Not from the playing. I only played for 3 numbers and they were spread out through the concert. It was more the release of all the pre-concert stress, I suppose. It was a lot of work (mentally) for the three of us to prepare for this recital, not only the music, but putting together all of the clothes for our costumes (it probably cost me over $100 to get everything I needed), organizing car pools to get to the venue and so on. Needless to say, on Monday, I was able to finally exhale, and my exhaustion finally caught up with me. In spite of the exhaustion, you can bet that we were at our taiko practices the next two days after the concert. (they were a bit lighter than usual, though.)

I hope to eventually get some video up of our performances, but in the meantime, several audience members gave us some nice pictures from the performance (and some of the practices) which I will post here for your enjoyment.

Here's my daughter ready to practice


More practicing...


... and the performance ...


My wife at Matto Bayashi practice...


Me at Matto Bayashi practice...


Here is the Matto Bayashi group before the concert...


Me (in the back) peforming with Matto Bayashi...


My wife (on the left) performing with Matto Bayashi...


Wow, there are a lot of pictures to post
Here is the Yume Mitai group picture before the concert...


Me at Yume Mitai practice...


Yume Mitai performance...


and a close up during the performance...


Oh yeah, I got interviewed again after our Matto Bayashi performance...


That is Kinoshita san of Hono Taiko interviewing me.

And the finale...


So, that's it for the photo essay of our performance. Be patient for videos. It will likely be a couple weeks before I have a chance to get them up. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures.

Dress Rehearsal

We just returned from our dress rehearsal for tomorrow's concert. I think everything went well enough and I feel ready for tomorrow's performance. I had one little thing go wrong for me today, though. I was playing a different drum than what I am used to and it turns out that the head is much tighter than my usual drum. When I hit the first couple notes, the rebound was so strong that my stick flew out of my hand. Although embarassing and I had to walk part way across the stage to pick it up, I recovered well and finished the song without any more mistakes. No one even mentioned it.

It was interesting to watch all the groups go through their rehearsal as well. One thing I noticed is that the instructors gave very few criticisms, if any. They only said things like "Play a little louder tomorrow." "Let's have even more energy tomorrow!" "Use more voice tomorrow." No individuals were pointed out or picked. No particular sections of the music were critized either. I know everything was not perfrect, but still, only very general comments were given. Even the practices the last couple weeks have been fairly relaxed, and non-critical. In my opinion, I think the instructors are thinking that at this point, it is too late to be making big changes. It will only put pressure on people and make them even more nervous. I think that their hope is that we will all relax and enjoy playing, and if we can do that, our best performance will come out by itself. I agree with this 100%. If the performers are enjoying themselves, the audience will too.

Lastly, I got two big encouragments as I was getting ready to leave. Our bags and coats were close to where Jige-san (of Hono Taiko) and Asano-san (the owner of Asano Taiko) were sitting. Both of them told me they thought I was doing a good job. I know not to put too much worth on this, but still, Jige-san is one of my original taiko inspirations and Asano-san, the owner of the company that makes the best taiko in the world, well, he's seen so many different taiko groups at so many levels, it's just an honor that he would give me encouragement. I was pleased.

busy busy busy

I can tell it's getting close to recital time. Besides looking at the calendar, I can also tell because of our increased practices. This week, there is a practice nearly every night. Normally I practice Monday and Tuesday evenings. This week, my Monday group, has added practices Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and even a three hour practice on Sunday afternoon again. The following week we will have at least Monday, Wednesday and Saturday (dress rehearsal) practices, if not more. When we cannot practice at Asano (or when I practice on my own) we cannot usually play the drums, so we just use our knees as a substitute. We are practicing so much in this way, I'm actually starting to get bruises or something. This is actually my first concert with Yume Mitai (the Monday night group) so I don't know if they always ratchet up the intensity like this before performances or not. I do know, however, that we are sort of being evaluated by the Asano staff at this recital to decide whether or not we will be able to perform at a May concert, which is a bit of a bigger deal. So the pressure is on to produce a good performance. I'll give more details about the May event once our participation is officially confirmed.
In the meantime, I'll just keep banging away at my bruised knees. And here is a picture of me at the Asano Taiko museum next to a 6 shaku drum (nearly 2 meter diameter) and it costs about 30,000,000 yen. That's about USD 290,000 based on current exchange rates.

The Asano Taiko Family and enjoy

Now that my schedule has settled down a little bit, I will try to make more frequent entries. In the last two weeks, or so, I've actually had quite a bit to say, but haven't had the time to write it down.

About two weeks ago, we attended Hono Taiko's concert in Kanazawa. I don't think that I have ever seen them "in concert". I've seen them many times at various events, but they were always there as part of some bigger event. So this was the first time that I saw just them. It quite enjoyable and made me think about many things. One aspect of the concert in particular which I paid close attention to was how they constructed their pieces. They are only three people, so it limits them somewhat as to how many parts their songs can have. At this point, my wife and I are only two people, so we also, are limited in what we can do, when we try to create songs. One thing I noticed was that most songs involved a kumi-taiko set up. This means that one person is surrounded by maybe three to five drums. It is basically a taiko drum set, I guess. This allows the song to have a little more variety in the parts.

My wife was commenting on how Hono Taiko is rather like Kanazawa's "Home Team" taiko group. Everyone in this area knows them, and likes them. It provides them a nice atmosphere to "work" in, and they have a lot of support and help. In fact, I am guessing that most of the people who attended the concert actually were acquainted with at least one of the three members. The interactions with the audience were very friendly and even included some personal greetings from the members. It was a very relaxed atmosphere. It seems Asano Taiko (which sponsors Hono Taiko, and the other two groups in which I am playing) is rather like a big family. At the concert, I saw almost every member of the two groups I am in either working at the concert, or attending the concert.

Sorry if this is a bit rambling. I had a lot to say right after seeing the concert, but it seems that I have forgotten what it was.

There are a couple other news items to add, but I'll save them for another time. For now, I'll just mention that our recital for the Kaga Taiko class is on Sunday and we had our final practice last night. There are nine students and at last night's practice we got to each perform our own improvisations twice. The first time was sort of practice, and Matsuya sensei (our instructor) gave advice and suggestions. The second time was rather like a dress rehearsal, and we ran through everything without stopping in program order. One of the comments that almost everyone had during our first run through, was to smile more. If you have been reading along with me, you may remember that I said Kaga style taiko is supposed to be relaxed and fun. Most of the nine of us don't have much experience with this style, so we probably all look like we're concentrating very hard on remember the correct rhythms and not making mistakes. Matsuya sensei said that many of us even looked scary. So for my second run through, I decided to not worry about anything and enjoy myself, have a good time. (This is what I have been telling my students at every speech and drama contest we have had, and so far the results have been good.) I think it worked for me. I smiled, and enjoyed playing the taiko. I am certain I made more mistakes than usual, but when I finished, I noticed the applause of my classmates was noticeably louder than it had been previously. I was even praised by the teacher. Perhaps I did make more mistakes than usual, but I think I played better than usual. Of course, playing well and accurately is important, and if you play too poorly, your audience will probably not enjoy themselves, but also, if you are too serious, your audience will also probably not enjoy themselves. If the performer is obviously worried about making mistakes, the audience will not be able to relax either. They will be on the edge of their seats wondering if the performer will make it through without screwing up. Even if he makes it through without mistakes, the audience is probably relieved when he finishes, instead of wishing they could hear more. Anyhow, lets enjoy playing taiko together! (heh heh heh).

As I said, the recital is on Sunday. Hopefully I'll have video to post of my performance, and Mayumi's (who is better than me, in my opinion).