Mochi Tsuki at Univ. of Michigan and Performance at Northville High School
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 06:44PM 
This was an exhausting weekend. We had events to play for on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. All of them went well. It was really exciting to finally get our drums out of the studio and share taiko with audiences in Ann Arbor and Northville.
On Saturday we were invited to perform at the annual Mochi Tsuki event hosted by the Center for Japanese Studies at University of Michigan. We played intermittently over an hour and a half in the lobby of the School of Social work. We arrived around 10:30 or so to unload and do a sound check. As I just mentioned, the event space was a lobby and it had a low ceiling, not really ideal for taiko drumming. You see, the sound has no where to go except out, and Asano taiko drums are probably some of the loudest around. We unloaded, set up and played through a couple songs. After playing a bit, worried faces began to appear on some of the organizers, volunteers, and on our own as well. Would it be too loud? It sure seemed like it.
We began to discuss alternatives in case the sound was too overbearing. We decided to cut a couple songs, hold back on the volume, take longer breaks between the songs and spend more time talking about the drums and taiko culture.
Our time to perform arrived. We got set up for our first number and I introduced our group, warning the audience that it might be a bit loud. Cautiously we began to play. We held back at least 50% and we cut the song a little bit short, but it didn’t seem nearly as loud as it had in the morning. All of the guests in the lobby seemed to be absorbing a lot of the sound. We reached the end of the song and received a healthy round of applause and smiling faces from the audience.
Maybe we can turn it up a notch… “Was it too loud?” we asked. “No, give us more!” was the response. We continued with our program, giving a little more each time, as long as the audience response was positive. We culminated our performance with a full volume version of Yatai Bayashi. By the time we were finished, there seemed to be smiles all around.
Almost 900 people attended the Mochi Tsuki event! We are really happy that we could share taiko drumming with so many people. I hope we will be invited back again next year.
A picture of me and my daughter playing taiko was posted at the Michigan Daily website. You can see it here
And there was an article about the Mochi Tsuki event on AnnArbor.com
Sunday was an audition for an event in May. I wonder if we were chosen....
Although we had our full five members for Saturday’s event, Monday’s event was during the day, so only Mayumi and I were able to perform.
We played a half hour concert at Northville High School for about 150 or so students. The response was very positive from the students and teachers. It was the first time, though, that Mayumi and I had performed 30 minutes straight, on our own, without a break. I ended up playing all three parts of Yatai Bayashi. It’s our own arrangement of the piece, so I started sitting style of playing, moved to shime taiko for the middle and ended on the Odaiko. I think it was about 10 minutes of strenuous playing. My arms felt like jello and my mouth was really dry by the time I finished, but I made it through.
I want to give a big thank you Northville High School for allowing us to share taiko with the students there, and especially to the World Language Department. The whole department made an effort to support us by attending this optional event with their students. One of the Spanish teachers even wrote up a quick blog about our performance at the High School. You can read it here
Now that we have finished our big performance weekend, we can relax a little. Wait! No we can’t, we are starting classes next Monday. We need to get ready for that! Interested in learning taiko? All the classes still have space. Check out our Taiko Classes page and drop us a line if you’re interested. (There may even be a special guest for the first Monday's classes!)
Finally some pictures from the weekend.
Before the Mochi Tsuki began, we thought we could draw some attention to the event by drumming out on the side walk. So we pulled out our Ojime daiko and two shime daiko onto the side walk in freezing cold temperatures (I think it was windy and in the teens.) We warmed ourselves up by playing Mushi Okuri a couple times through.
With four college guys to help us lift, it was pretty easy getting our Odaiko up on the stand.
Doing the sound check ...
View of us preparing for our first number from the audience...
More pictures from performances on our photo gallery page.
Reader Comments (1)
Hello!
We held the concert in Rochester.
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=1000535345&blogId=511770482
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=1000535345&blogId=513974984
Sincerely yours
Shintaro SENDO