Shakuhachi blowing Zen hanko

Hand-made hanko traditional arts stamp: it means “bamboo song blowing Zen [suizen]” from a tiny little workshop under Shibuya station.

Rockies Shakuhachi Summer Camp

Photos are now online at dot-mac photo library

Rockies, Loveland, Colorado - Shakuhachi Summer Camp with Faculty of David Wheeler, Riley Lee, Kaoru Kakizakai, Christopher Yohmei Basdel. 5,000 feet +

After the 10 hour flights from Tokyo, LAX seemed brusque, bustling, smoggy and bombastic, thence 2 hours more to Denver. Bill Fletcher, John-Paul Sicotte and I shared a rental car to Sunrise Ranch, Loveland Colorado. Denver is the 'mile high' city and the ranch sat along a volcanic ridge of mountainous, fertile tract on the verge of desert, a further two hours from Denver and 500m higher. Much of the journey from LA to Denver flew over desert, picturesque canyons, gorges, meandering rivers in windy rounded snakes and finally the still snow-capped (in summer) Rockies mountain plateau. Arriving the night before camp commencement, we ate the first of a series of organic, home-grown (in the ranch), predominantly vegetarian and vegan meals including many unrecognisable but fresh local herbal garden ingredients, weird mints, types of spinach, purple and yellow tomatoes, many lentils, indigenous eggs, tofu served by the cheery hosts - Divine Emissaries of Light, one of the oldest, self-sufficient spiritual communes in the USA (happy hippies) who own and maintain the ranch, a conference and retreat centre.

At night, the wild canine cries of a pack of coyotes could be heard reverberating through the hills. We sighted elk in the adjacent cattle paddock, tall and proud like giant deer with magnificent antlers and a fawn. Amongst the other local wildlife, we were warned to be vigilant for pervasive rattle snakes such as the one spotted by Cory Sperry who purportedly leapt very far and we had to wash out recycling carefully to not exacerbate the bear problem that recently saw a bear and her cub foraging close to the dormitories. By night in the rain, frogs emerged eating beetles attracted by the lights.

Our Faculty comprised Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, Riley Lee, Kakizakai Sensei, David Wheeler and Yoko Hiraoka (koto). The program involved a student concert (in which Doug and I played Honte Choshi as a duet), wonderful professional concert by the staff and a sight-reading ensemble/duet night. Three sessions each day were on selected repertoire intensively, ranging from traditional solo honyoku pieces, sankyoku vocal and shakuhachi with koto or shamisen pieces and modern ensemble and solo pieces. Early morning breathing/spirituality and shakuhachi classes started at 6.30am while others like Riley, David Wheeler and Doug, etc. went for an early morning high altitude run and Kakizakai stood outside playing Yamagoe which drifted beautifully and far. Kurita-san 'father' of my shakuhachi, set up in residence repairing instruments with its lacquer concocted from poison ivy. Christopher Blasdel performed aikido demonstrations with Lee. Morning theory talks included Riley on different forms of breathing torture, both hyper and hypo-ventilation to build mind control over matter and possible some deep breathing and diaphragm muscles, too. Chris talked on mind/body awareness, balance and control, Kakizakai on dragon breath subtle onsets and tapered note decays, robuki and embouchure and David Wheeler presented chamber music and particularly unfolded the koto instrument (like a horizontal harp from Japanese boxwood with ivory bridges and plectra. But the shamisen wins the anti-ecology award with a belly made from stretched cat-skin and to balance things, the rear is made from dog, with a tortoise-shell bridge, ivory plectrum and some other protected species - was it buffalo bits?

It was a great opportunity to make friends with like-minded enthusiastic eccentrics: a family of black sheep, ranging from musicologists, musicians of other instrumental backgrounds, MDs, scientists, beginners, people who had been playing 30-50 (Kurita) years and from locations as diverse as Texas, Edmonton Canada, East and West USA, Hawaii, Japan and Australia.

The successions are Shak and Surf in Hawaii and Sydney 2008 hosting the World Shakuhachi Festival for which I will help Christopher Blasdel organise the academic conference, perhaps with Allan Marett, to be discussed in Tokyo next week.

Japan trip for lessons with Kakizakai

Lessons in Chichibu and Tokyo. 16 June - 10 July with break in the middle for Shak Camp, USA. You can read detail about this under my dot-mac travel blog