Raion Taiko Now Offering Lawn Care!

Lawn Care? That's right! This past Saturday, we performed at another graduation party. As usual, we ended with Mushi Okuri, which means to send away the bugs. The piece was traditionally played while walking through the rice fields in Kaga in order to make noise and scare away the bugs and other pests.  As I was explaining this to the audience, the father of the graduate said, "I don't care about the bugs, get rid of the moles!"

"Alright," I said, "Today we'll call it Mogura Okuri." (Mogura is Japanese for mole)

Later, as we were packing up our drums into the van, I noticed a rodent crawling out of the lawn and crossing the street. Upon closer examination, it turned out to be... you guessed it, a mole! I guess it worked. We sent at least one of the moles away. So... should you have a mole problem in your yard, just give us a call, we'll play "mogura okuri" for you and get rid of your moles as well!

Independence Day Parade, Plymouth, MI

A week before the mole episode we got up at the crack of dawn to participate in the Good Morning USA Independence Day Parade in Plymouth, MI.  The parade starts at 7:30 AM and is one of the earliest in the US. As difficult as it was to wake up at quarter to 5, I was grateful for the early start because it got pretty hot later on that day. Mayumi and I played Odaiko for about 45 min non-stop and that was hot enough as it was.

There was a lot of positive response from the spectators along the way and a few shouts of encouragement from people we knew. Overall it went very well. The good news about next year: the parade organizer said they will be moving back the start time.

Here are a few pictures from getting ready for the parade:

Graduation Party

Last weekend we were invited to perform at the graduation party for the son of a colleague. Our 60 minute program went over well and the audience seemed to enjoy themselves.  We were worried about the weather since they had been forecasting storms all week long, but as it turned out, we had blue skies the whole time.  It also turned out to be our hottest performance yet. The sun beat down on us the whole time.  Playing Miyake in the late afternoon sun is a lot more exhausting than playing it indoors.

More pictures from the performance

Beford Library Anime Convention and Michigan Genbukai Karate Spectacular

Last Sunday (June 13), we packed up our new van and a trailer and the five of us piled in and drove an hour south to Temperance Michigan. The Bedford Library was holding an Anime Convention and invited us to perform.  It was our first outdoor performance since January, when we played Mushi Okuri outside of the University of Michigan Mochi Tsuki event.  The weather on Sunday was a lot warmer than it was back in January. We performed in the parking lot in front of the library. As we were setting up, we even attracted the curiosity of several passers by.

"Where are you guys from?" One lady asked.

"The Great Lakes Taiko Center in Novi," I answered.

"And what brings you all the way down here?"

"The Anime Convention."

"The enemy convention!? Who's the enemy?"

"No, no. The anime convention. You know, like Japanese animation?"

"Oh, I see..."

It was very hot and most of us got some sunburn, but we enjoyed ourselves very much. I hope we can perform again next year. See pictures from the event in the photo gallery.

For residents of the Northeast Detroit suburbs, we, along with about 8 of our students, have a performance on Friday evening (June 18) for the Michigan Genbukai Karate-do school. We are a guest performer at their Karate Spectacular: a showcase event to benefit the Special Olympics. The performance is at 7:00 PM and tickets are $7 for adults and $4 for children 12 and under. See all the details on the Performances page.

Marshall Middle School Concert

Raion Taiko

Marshall Middle School Concert, February 20, 2010

"Matsuri"

お疲れ様でした！Wow! What a weekend! What a week, for that matter.  Saturday, Raion Taiko held our first major concert (almost 2 hours long) at Marshall Middle School, in Marshall, MI.  That's quite an accomplishment considering that we only just started practicing together last November.

We arrived in Marshall around 1 PM to unload and set up.  Marshall Middle School has quite an old building, but it seems to be well taken care of, so it was very nice building, with a fairly impressive auditorium for a middle school.

The view from the stage. I wonder if we can fill up all the seats?

The reason for putting on this concert was as a fundraiser for some students who will be traveling to Japan in May. The more tickets they sold, the more money they raised for themselves. They had hoped to sell out the auditorium, which olds over 800 people.  Unfortunately, since this was really our first major performance, we don't quite have the drawing power to sell that many tickets. Most people are still saying, "Raion Taiko? Who? What is taiko, anyway?" Hopefully our performance on Saturday began to answer some of those questions.  In the end, however, we were only able to bring in somewhere around 150 (?) people.

Whether it was 100 people or 800 people, our goal was to give them an enjoyable evening.  Based on the reaction at the end of the show, I believe we accomplished that.  We had hardly finished playing the final note and there were calls from the audience for "One more! One more!" I can't tell you how happy that made us feel.  Although there are many parts of our performance where we wish we could have played better, we our pleased that the audience enjoyed themselves. We had a good time, too.

The Encore - "Kaga Mushi Okuri"

We were all fairly exhausted after a big performance like this. Here is what our day was like:

9 - 10:30 taiko class at our Novi studio

11:00 leave for Marshall

12:45 arrive at Marshall Middle School and unload truck

1:15 場ミリ - marking stage locations for drums

"Move it just a little more to the right." Doing "Bamiri" before the run-through.

3:30 - 5:15 Rehearsal, program run-through

5:15 - 5:45 dinner

Backstage getting ready

6:30 - 8:30 Concert!

Miyake Taiko

9:00 Pack up

9:30 depart for studio

11:00 miss exit on freeway add an extra 30 min onto travel time

11:45 arrive at Novi studio and unload

12:30 AM Bedtime

 After we finally got home, I said to Mayumi, "No wonder we're so tired, including the run-through, we actually played two full concerts today.  But just think, groups like Yamato or Kodo have this kind of schedule nearly every day!" I think she may have been asleep before I finished what I was saying, though.

Great job everyone. Thank you to the members of Raion Taiko: Tom, Eileen and Larry; Thank you to our families who all helped us out in getting this show together and thank you to the staff and students in Marshall who hosted us.  We all had a great time. 

See you next year!

See the rest of the pictures from the concert in the photo gallery:

Marshall Middle School Taiko Concert

Raion Taiko in Concert, This Saturday (Feb 20)

February 20th has nearly arrived.  What's so important about February 20th? We are playing a major concert at Marshall Middle School, in Marshall, MI. The organizers are teachers at the school who are in charge of an exchange program between their school and a junior high in Shiga, Japan.  They contacted me ... gosh ... I feel like it was almost a year ago, to see if we'd be interested in doing a fundraising concert for their students. Although we were still in Japan at the time and the only members of our group were me and my wife, I said we'd do it. Now there are five of us and our new members, Tom, Eileen and Larry, have worked hard to learn new music, as well as teach us a few new songs. 

Last weekend we rented a local auditorium to do a run through on our own, with costumes and everything. (see the picture above) and now, we're ready to go. Friday night we'll pack up our drums and after Saturday morning taiko class, we'll head on over to Marshall for the concert.

We even got a write up in the Battle Creek Enquirer today:

Rhythm of the Far East coming to Marshall

If you're interested in coming out to see us, please take a look at the information on our Taiko Performances page.

We hope to see a lot of people there.