Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hello.  Wow, I'm just amazed by this site.  The shakuhachi is really taking off...   I'm still in a somewhat out of the way part of Japan after almost two decades and still struggling with the flute, and now trying to learn how to teach the instrument as well.  This weekend I'll be performing with koto and shamisen players at something called the Ito Asobi No Kai ("playing around with koto") at the San Suien Hotel in Kochi at 2:30 p.m. if by any chance any one is traveling in this part of Japan; it's a free concert; we'll be playing the gaikyoku pieces Chidori no Kyoku, Sode Koro and Miyagi Michiyo's piece Miyako Odori.  Oh...introduction...my name is Daniel Ribble and I've been learning and playing the shakuhachi here in Kochi for almost 19 years.  Some of my more interesting experiences with the flute were playing Hifumi Hachigaeshi at my first paying gig out of Japan seven years ago for a variety show called Mick's Bag at an Indian restaurant  in Hong Kong following an outdoor buffet one rainy evening in March when I couldn't get any sound out of my flute and the audience thought it was a comedy act, performing with a Tokyo shakuhachi/koto group at Shanghai's Concert Hall together with Shanghai's Traditional Music Orchestra -- some fantastic musicians performing on erhu and dzi, playing Japanese honkyoku for a country wedding in Marlow, England in traditional hakama/haori while the four Japanese musicians were all in formal western dress playing Bach, having an impromptu session with jazz musicians met by chance along the Seine river in Paris on Bastille Day in 1999, playing for a house warming party in the wilds of Transylvania in a village called Ticcu Vecchi, and last year's improvizational pub sessions in Sheffield, U.K., with a Dutch player of Cuban rhumba on cahon.  As for life outside of shakuhachi, I'm married, practice aikido here with our two children and have been teaching English and editing doctors' papers at a local medical school for the last decade.  If any followers of the bamboo way happen to be traveling through the Kochi area I'd be glad introduce you to players in the area and my sensei here (and to my aikido class as well, which is great fun, with the aikido master playing a bit of shakuhachi too); I teach the shakuhachi outdoors on Saturday afternoons in a park called Josei Koen, behind Kochi Castle and Kochi Budokan (martial arts center).  Thanks for creating such a great forum, and  gambatte with the shakuhachi playing, making, and teaching.           
Best Wishes,        Dan Ryudo

Last edited by Daniel Ryudo (2006-02-20 21:46:23)