Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hi.

I'm a very green shakuhachi student in San Francisco. Currently studying under Philip Gelb. I'm not a serious musician, so not sure exactly what possessed me to try to learn this difficult instrument. I played clarinet and bass clarinet in high school over 20 years ago, but that's pretty much it.

My wife is half Japanese, and once when her mother was visiting here I asked what music she wanted to listen to and she suggested Tajima Tadashi. I downloaded some from the Apple music store and immediately recognized the same instrument playing at the beginning of Baraka (one of my favorite movies). The next time I was in Tokyo she took me to a shakuhachi store and I bought a student model, which I idly played around with for a little over a year (with little to no progress) before finally finding an instructor.

I'm really enjoying it now, and look forward to decades of improvement. I figure at this rate in a decade I'll be somewhere north of awful.

Philip has been a great teacher. I'm an engineer and don't know much about Zen or Buddhism (although I appreciate them from afar), and he is able to put things in a practical perspective that makes sense to me. I now have two student models, so I can leave one at home and I keep one at work where I can play for 15-20 minutes each day. It's a wonderful way to clear the mind in the middle of a stressful work load.

I'm glad to have discovered this forum! Much thanks to the creators and maintainers.