Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

I was fortunate enough to land tickets for one of the shows the band Hiroshima played at Yoshi?Äôs Jack London Square last week. The band Hiroshima has been releasing albums and CDs since the late seventies. Their current tour is in support of the latest release Little Tokyo (read the review at http://listenandbeheard.net/2007/06/06/little-tokyo/ ).

Considering the stature of the band and the venue, the tickets were very reasonably priced. Yoshi?Äôs performance hall is laid out in the intimate jazz club style, so all attendees get good views of the performers and excellent sound quality regardless of seating placement. An all instrumental show, the music of Hiroshima is a fusion of jazz with traditional Japanese instruments and arrangements. Most of the songs were from the Little Tokyo disc, with a few Hiroshima classics like San Say included for good measure. Normally a quiet band, with leader Dan Kuramoto doing most of the audience interaction, this time several band members made comments between songs, including koto player June Kuramoto. On her biggest solo, Ms. Kuramoto took her koto to musical and seemingly physical extremes, but she did not break anything. In between songs, the soft spoken Dan Kuramoto discussed world peace, promoted cultural diversity, and how the commercial music distribution system had changed. The taiko drum was back, absent since Johnny Mori was a band member. Newest band member Shoji Kameda handled the taiko and various other percussion duties, including an incredible Tuva style throat singing performance. The requisite percussion solos did not come until the encore set, with Kameda and drummer Dan Yamamoto banging away together and then individually.

Hiroshima is Dean Cortez (electric bass guitar), Shoji Kameda (taiko and various percussion), June Kuramoto (koto), Dan Yamamoto (drums and percussion), Kimo Cornwell (keyboards) and Dan Kuramoto (flute, clarinet, saxophone and shakuhachi).

For more about Hiroshima, and their catalog of 16 releases, please visit:

http://www.hiroshimamusic.com/

Band member Shoji Kameda has his own group called On Ensemble. They have a CD called Dust and Sand and a DVD of their live performance. The art of taiko drumming has a visual component that is so much more sensual than just an audio recording, no matter how good the playback system is. Please check out On Ensemble?Äôs website at:

http://www.onensemble.org/

The Dust and Sand CD has been released under the Creative Commons license ( http://creativecommons.org/ ), meaning that the disc can be copied and redistributed legally. I guess the sounds of big drums should be shared.

By the way, Yoshi?Äôs has really improved the quality of their food.

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