Hello.

Welcome back to reading my emails. I have a lot to update on since last writing. It's been a few months and I've been too busy to pen any thoughts of substance.

I got to help out my tea teacher with a Harvest Moon tea ritual the other day. Done by candlelight - always my favorite vibe.

As readers of this newsletter know I love using the river metaphor to describe music. How music is like a river that we explore and draw from for our time. I've been thinking about the moon, about reflecting the light of the source of music and beaming it onto the Earth. Being a musician is like being the moon - our lives beam us insane intense energy and we reflect it back (usually at night) to an audience. A month or so of shows then a night off. The New Moon. Each night has a different vibe - a swell of light that's a month long crescendo - diminuendo. Like the shape of each breath that makes a note. We are feeling pithy but it can't be helped.

I had some great shows/gatherings this last month with some dear friends. I got to take a group lesson from Araki Kodo VI a musician whose story can't be understated. He's 6th generation to inherit music from the Kinko School of shakuhachi (the school I also belong to). His forebears literally wrote and adapted the music we play today. His great great grandfather came up with the notation system we still use. He was born here in the US and made a career for himself playing Irish flute. He has the sophistication of his legacy and the swag of a musician in our age. Learning from him is inspiring for hearing the actual "pronounced-vocabulary" of shakuhachi music and his sound is inimitable. He gets called "old-fashioned" by some of his peers. When someone says that about musicians it proves to me how closed minded they are. Let people play, come on. I love the old style sounds of shakuhachi - it doesn't come through on recordings properly and hearing that approach live is a treasure.

Soon after, i played a concert with two of my "shakuhachi siblings" Devon Osamu Tipp and Christopher Foss. We took some video that night and we played a new composition of mine. I'll link to my composition here. It's mellow - a game piece in which everyone tries to make a continuous sound. The piece moves to the next part when there is a silence. We needed a referee for this performance because there were a couple really tiny silences. Click the flutes to see the video!

I'm having a bit of a break from gigs this month. Reach out if you want to learn shakuhachi! I've been teaching more. Thanks for reading. All the best to all of you.