First lesson with Riley Lee

Following on from the Australian Shakuhachi Festival in ACT at which I was an absolute beginner, we looked at the Chikuho exercise book [Riley's Beginner's Manual], fingerings, articulations, percussive onsets ...
Thoroughly daunting yet inspiring!

Australian Shakuhachi Festival

Australian Shakuhachi Festival Canberra at ANU 10-13 February, 2006. The start of my shakuhachi learning experience. Teachers included Bronwyn Kirkpatrick, Riley Lee, Matama, Furuya, Kakizakai, Andrew MacGregor (Melb), Stuart Ransom (Qld) ... 3 main days of lessons, group classes, in my case the absolute beginners just making a noise, learning basic first octave fingering and concepts of meri and kari head position pitch shifting.

Bought Kurita 1.8

Today I bought the beautiful smoked Kurita 1.8 shakuhachi, beginning of my journey and affection/attachment [oops] to shakuhachi [at the Australian Shakuhachi Festival '06 in Canberra]

Voice of Bamboo

A frustrating airy blow on my yuu plastic shakuhachi with sincere and very kindly, generous Frenchman, David Liefermann, also a photographer with a beautiful Persian cat. The painful seiza position on the floor was most memorable. He runs the Voie de Bambu - French chapter of the way of bamboo, about 20 players, including many of his students. I think he was suspicious that I was only interested in shakuhachi to augment my composition practice. I don’t count this as my first lesson simply because I still couldn’t produce a sound afterwards and it was not until ASF in January ’06 that I attempted in earnest.