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Mark H Rooney Taiko

Taiko Instructor & Performer

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Mark H Taiko’s First Online “Meet the Artist” by Lee Blank

12.08.2020 by Linda Lombardi //

Building community and supporting other artists are founding principles of the Mark H Taiko experience, so it came as no surprise that Mark H. Rooney would quickly pivot to online offerings during the pandemic. I’ve had the great privilege to study taiko with Mark in his Takoma Park community classes since early 2014. Since then I’ve gotten to play in community with others, perform in festivals, attend fantastic concerts and study a wide variety of techniques in workshops with guest artists. This “former non-musician” even built her own drum!

But for me, by far the best Mark H offering has been the amazing Meet the Artist events. Mark has brought some of the greatest taiko artists in the world to share with us, in an intimate, small-group setting. In the last few years I’ve had the great joy to hear from and see performances by Shoji Kameda, Kaoru Watanabe, Tiffany Tamaribuchi, Marco Lienhard, and Kenny Endo, and to learn Obon dance from Noriko Nakamura.

Since being bitten by the taiko bug, I follow lots of taiko folks online, and in the fall of 2019 I was excited to hear about a Kickstarter campaign for HERbeat. If you aren’t familiar, HERbeat was an amazing all-women taiko project, culminating in a concert and making-of movie project. I quickly donated and have followed the project with great interest, so imagine my delight when Mark announced that one of the HERbeat artists, Yurika Chiba, would be our first virtual “Meet the Artist” guest.

Yurika plays with San Jose Taiko and her infectious enthusiasm is incredible.  She’s also a talented, whimsical artist and creator of TaikoCat. Logging on to her Meet the Artist event, I was happy to see so many familiar, and new, faces on the Zoom screen, playfully toasting with Kombucha, cider, or tea.  As always the event felt intimate and was a perfect combination of personal introduction/background and experiential participation. We learned a lot about Yurika’s journey to taiko and art. She led us in a flash-card guided movement exercise that was ideal for the Zoom platform.  She also shared philosophy on cue cards. One that particularly resonated with me was “the fullness of life is incubated in its messy places.” Indeed.

The audience participated in a good and wide-ranging Q&A session, finally getting the definitive answer to the question “Does Canadian money smell like syrup?” (Depends on what you had for breakfast). My only regret was not being able to see, hear, and feel Yurika play in person. I’ll hold out hope for that to happen in future.

If you have the opportunity to join a future “Meet the Artist” event, don’t miss the chance. These are the “cream of the crop” of performers and teachers in the taiko world, brought to your virtual doorstep, by a kind and generous man who helped introduce me to my inner drummer.

To sign up for the next online Meet the Artist with David Wells, click here.

Categories // Performances, Taiko Voices, Uncategorized Tags // community, Meet the Artist, yurika chiba

Learning How to Kiai in a Pandemic by Molly Bergen

05.01.2020 by Linda Lombardi //

I was a shy kid who rarely raised my voice, even on the playground, yet as long as I remember I’ve been drawn to the drums. When I was eight or nine, and a recent transplant to northern California from the East Coast, my parents took me to see Stanford Taiko. I was transfixed by the entire thing — the deep pulse of the odaiko that I could feel in my chest, the crisp articulation of a dozen drummers playing in unison, the sudden swells in volume until everyone was playing full out. I also loved the energy of the players, who smiled and grimaced and sweated and yelled through it all. I had no idea what they were saying, but somehow it made sense anyway.

Since then, my love of drumming has taken me lots of places, from school concert band to jazz set lessons, from West African drumming classes to my college “found-object percussion group,” before bringing me back to taiko in 2011, when I picked up a flyer for an “intro to taiko” workshop by Mark H Rooney. Nine (!) years later, I’m a member of Miyako Taiko and the Mark H Taiko Connection.

In my ongoing efforts to become a better performer, kiai (the unintelligible yelling I remember from my first taiko show) has always been a big challenge for me. Kiai is used to convey emotion and communicate with fellow taiko players — to give energy to a tired soloist, for example — as well as the audience. A taiko song could be played perfectly, but if there is no kiai, it will probably sound like something is missing. But knowing all this hasn’t made it much easier for me to do it. I constantly have to remind myself “don’t forget to kiai,” which just goes to show how unnatural it is for me.

Fast-forward to early March 2020. I arrived at Miyako practice to find Mark Clorox-wiping bachi. Everyone was on edge. The coronavirus outbreak had just been declared a pandemic, and state and city leaders were starting to ban large gatherings of people.  We didn’t know it at the time, but this was the last practice we’d be having for a while.

After talking through some recent news developments (including the cancellation of Sakura Taiko Fest, our flagship annual show, as well as the entire cherry blossom performance season), we set up the drums to run through a couple of songs. On that particular Thursday, after a stressful week, it felt great to hit the drum as hard as I could. I was surprised to hear myself yelling, too — and it felt different this time.

Instead of my brain telling my mouth what to yell like it  normally does (“Try yelling this sound!”), I didn’t even have to think about the emotions I should be conveying. I just felt them, and then I heard them coming from my own lips — not actual words, more like primal sounds of all the emotions I had built up in recent weeks of seeing COVID-19 slowly take over and then upend our world. Frustration. Anger. Fear. Grief.

Expressing these all-consuming emotions was exhausting, but it also felt good. And as we moved on to a lighter song, and I looked around at so many people smiling for the first time of the evening, another feeling rose to the surface: immense gratitude for this group of people that I get to play with every week (in normal life, anyway).

More than 40 days into social distancing here in Washington, D.C., taiko practice is one of the things I have been missing the most. I can’t wait for that first post-pandemic practice, whenever that may be — something tells me we’ll need that kiai more than ever.

Photos copyright Thomas Huggins

 

Categories // Taiko Voices, Uncategorized Tags // taiko, taiko communication

Virtual Sakura Taiko Fest

04.09.2020 by Linda Lombardi //

The Sakura Taiko Takeover at the Tidal Basin is our biggest event of the year. Part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, if we’re lucky, it actually takes place among blooming cherry trees, as it did last year. While this year’s event was cancelled, we can still enjoy performances by some of the groups that were planning to participate through the magic of the internet.

Oto-Wa Taiko would have been our first guest group from outside the United States, traveling to DC from the Canadian capital. Oto-Wa Taiko members are celebrating the group’s 30th anniversary this year. The name Oto-Wa Taiko, while phonetically reflecting its community of origin, Ottawa, uses two Japanese characters, OTO (音) and WA (和). OTO means sound while WA means harmony. The character WA symbolizes the harmony of spirit among the players with their taiko as they make joyous sound together. Oto-Wa Taiko also conducts general interest taiko workshops and runs taiko classes for anyone interested in experiencing taiko first-hand.

River City Taiko is a community taiko group in Richmond, Virginia, and has been active for nearly ten years. The group gives lessons in traditional Japanese drumming, and performs at a number of events throughout the year in Central Virginia as well as Tidewater and the Charlottesville area. River City Taiko’s mission is to let people of all ages and backgrounds know that taiko is both something that they can enjoy and a community that they can become a part of. If you’d like to learn more, please visit River City Taiko on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Our neighbors Nen Daiko have performed at every Sakura Taiko event since the tradition began! Nen Daiko is the taiko ensemble of Ekoji Buddhist Temple in Fairfax Station, Virginia, and has been performing in the Washington DC metropolitan area for over 25 years.

While we don’t have video, we’d also like to give a shoutout to the other groups that were planning to travel to DC: Taiko Tides from Stony Brook, Columbia Taiko from Columbia University,  and the Swarthmore Taiko Ensemble. And stay tuned for another post with video of our Mark H Taiko groups!

 

 

 

Categories // Performances, Taiko Voices, Uncategorized Tags // DC, National Cherry Blossom Festival, performances, sakura taiko fest, Tidal Basin

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Meet the Artist Series

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Join world-renowned taiko artists in an informal, intimate … read more

Taiko Voices

Mark H Taiko’s First Online “Meet the Artist” by Lee Blank

December 8, 2020 By Linda Lombardi

Building community and supporting other artists are founding principles of … [Read More...]

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Random Acts of Taiko

TONIGHT!! In less than 7 hours, (at 8 PM Eastern S TONIGHT!! In less than 7 hours, (at 8 PM Eastern Standard Time, tonight, Friday, 2/19) - Ryo Shimamoto takes to the Meet the Artist screen! Please register ahead of time: https://www.markhrooney.com/event/meet-the-artist-ryo-shimamoto/ See you soon!
Just THREE DAYS!! Feb 19th, 8 PM EST, join us for Just THREE DAYS!! Feb 19th, 8 PM EST, join us for our fourth virtual “Meet the Artist” featuring the (intended) Artists of CONNECT2020! This one is close to my heart as it features my remarkable teacher and taiko-brother Ryo Shimamoto @jdryo!  As it will be Saturday morning in Japan (where he is joining us from), Ryo is recommending lemon tea but also encourages pear cider (which he can’t find in his area but we got him hooked on back at Kristen’s and my wedding...!) Pull up a sofa, set up a viewing device with good sound and get your drink on as we #MeetTheArtist this Friday! #MarkHTaikopresents  https://www.markhrooney.com/event/meet-the-artist-ryo-shimamoto/
Our very first INTERNATIONAL “Meet the Artist” Our very first INTERNATIONAL “Meet the Artist” event features Ryo Shimamoto @jdryo , my teacher from Wakayama, Japan! I can’t BEGIN to convey how excited I am for this - Ryo is not only a talented taiko teacher and artist but is also an endlessly engaging taiko-talker! See you Feb 19, 8 PM EST (Eastern Standard Time - please check for local time). Space in LIMITED so sign up today HERE: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYld-iurj0qHdVyTh_3ufvvyD-rk9FgNtDG  #markhtaikopresents #MeetTheArtist #withryoshimamoto
THIS SATURDAY at 8 PM EST! Mark H Taiko presents a THIS SATURDAY at 8 PM EST! Mark H Taiko presents another in our virtual “Meet the Artist” series - featuring Michelle Fujii and Toru Watanabe AND Unit Souzou ensemble! #virtualMeettheArtist #MHTpresents #unitsouzou
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About Mark H

Mark H Rooney studies, performs, and teaches taiko: a dynamic form of full-body drumming based in Japanese tradition. Mark combines that traditional foundation with a modern sensibility to create performances and classes that are full of energy, endurance, and excitement!

Interested in bringing taiko to your school, organization, or event? Contact Mark H. Mark will work with you to tailor a workshop or performance to meet your needs…
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