Saturday, May 26, 2012

Tokyo concerts part 2

Since my last blog (Tokyo concerts part 1), I've had 2 more concerts in Tokyo, and some other activities in between, so I'm going to write about the Tokyo concerts here first...

A few weeks back Yuki and I joined Kathak dancer Atsuko Maeda and her students at Cafe Muriwui in Setagaya for a small concert, which was kind of a rehearsal of our upcoming show at Dance of Shiva in Izu.



Then earlier this week I joined bansuri brother Taro Terahara and pakhawaj brother Tetsuya Kaneko at Otoya-Kintoki for a very special concert. Tetsuya's guru, Pt Shrikant "Toon-ji" Mishra had passed away a week earlier on May 15th, so he was very much in our minds. My own guru-ji passed away in 2004 so I felt a lot of sympathy for Tetsuya at this tough time. Actually my guru-ji first learned pakhawaj as a boy under Pt Ram Nath Mishra, Toon-ji's guru's guru, and was close friends with Toon-ji's guru-ji all their life, so Tetsuya and I have a strong musical family connection. I enjoyed playing along on tabla in pakhawaj style in Tivra Taal and later Teentaal. The highlight of the concert was Tetsuya's passionate pakhawaj solo in Chautaal.



Pakhawaj solo by Tetsuya Kaneko


Pt Shrikant Mishra (1952-2012) was there with us in spirit

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