Big Show

This Saturday is the Grand Opening for RCW. OMG, it's coming up soon. I feel ready. Mostly. We have rehearsal tomorrow for the Three Rivers piece, which opens the show. I'm so intimidated since I'll be playing with wonderfully talented people. Tonight I tightened both of Janet's shime, and boy did I get sweaty. I get more sweaty tightening shime than I do running--it just drips off me.

If you're around you should totally see the space. You should totally come to the show! You're invited! Come! The place is BEAUTIFUL! The floors, the walls, the stage--even the stairs are beautiful. I'm so jealous that I don't live there. It's going to be a wonderful place where the community can come and share their talents and knowledge and to bring people together. I'm so not the person who has the vocabulary to do the PR on this place, but it is wonderful and you need to check it out. At least go to the Rhythmix Cultural Works website.

Rhythmix Cultural Works Grand Opening

GRAND OPENING

June 2nd, 2007, 8pm.

Our free daytime celebration will include performances from our instructors including Brazilian capoeira, Japanese taiko drumming, Hoop dance, and presentations from the Alameda High School Jazz Band and The Alameda Children's Musical Theater. We will have an incredible silent auction and raffle with one-of-a-kind items - not to be missed! Hands-on art workshops and festival-style entertainment with stilt-walkers, jugglers, NBAM's Lil' Juju pinball games, fire-eaters, and the Bicycle Rodeo. We will be opening the K Gallery with an exhibit titled "The Art of Food" featuring well-known Bay Area artists from Magnolia Press in Oakland. We will celebrate our opening with food booths from local vendors, sampling their artistry! Another Room Book Arts Bookstore, adjacent to the K Gallery, will also be opening. Another Room carries book arts, artists' books and ephemera, from around the United States, and a few books from beyond our borders. Our Evening Performance will be $25 in advance and a sliding scale $30 to $3000 at the door, and will be hosted by well-known comedian Ed Holmes with notable Bay Area performers including The San Francisco Mime Troupe, Maze Daiko, Bay Area Theater Sports, Izu Ensemble (jazz fusion), and dance music from DJ Vordo. There will be a coffee and dessert reception with the artists following the performance. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to bring new and established artists to Alameda. Please join us for our Grand Opening!

Rhythmix Cultural Works

2513 Blanding Ave

Alameda, CA 94501

Additional Event Information (510)845-5060
http://www.rhythmix.org

This promises to be a really good show. Space is limited, people! Get your tickets soon!

Chekere Finito

Finished my chekere last weekend--more out of necessity than anything. RCW is having its grand opening on June 2nd, and we're gearing up for that. We're playing a piece called "Three Rivers" which predates me by decades and decades of experience. I'm totally intimidated, since we're playing with musicians who have been described as having "perfect timing." No exaggeration, especially since I've seen these perfect-timing musicians in real life. As percussion-girl I turned down a part to play clave for someone who was described as having centered her life around clave. What do I know?? I wanted to finally make the final knots on my chekere because my chekere is way quieter and more subtle than the chekere I've been playing. I'm playing with my teacher's teachers. I'm playing with folks who have made it possible for women to pursue drumming in the ways we are pursuing it in the first place.

Just writing about this makes me realize how stressful this is going to be. Kai to Ryu! Kanki! You don't remember this do you, but remember how much I stressed over that for the Aiko performance? And Mokuyobi. My goals for this performance are to get through Kai to Ryu flawlessly, to rework on my Kanki solo, and to have my (boring) Mokuyobi solo down. Plus we have the show during the day, and I volunteered to be on stage crew, plus the evening performances (that people are paying to see) plus more stage crew, and then meet-and-greet after the show. And then taiko teaching the following Tuesday. I spent all of today coming up with a syllabus for that.

It'll be a good learning experience. That's what I say. Plus, isn't this what I've always wanted?

Bay to Breakers 2007: Tres Fridas

Ran Bay to Breakers again yesterday. It was a fun race. This year we decided to dress up as Frida Kahlo. Mary and I stayed up till 2 in the morning the night before putting the finishing touches on our costumes. Actually I put in practically zero effort, but was surprised at how well it turned out. Mary was Frida from her painting "The Broken Column," which I thought was totally cool. Mary's friend wore an Adams' family wig and curled the braids up a la Frida. I put roses in my hair which for some reason negated the fact that my hair is short and made me look very Frida-esque. I thought we looked great:Here's a pic of a tortilla. I finally got a good answer to my question of WHY tortillas? Mary said they're organic confetti. That works for me. I sent this baby flying right after I took the pic:
This year it took us 35 minutes to cross the start line:
There were the usual naked people and people hauling carts of alcohol and really funny and really horrendous costumes. My favorite Bay to Breakers regulars are the group of people who dress up as salmon and start at the finish line and end at the starting line. Isn't that cool?And here we are running up the Hayes Street Hill, which is not as hard as it looks on TV. I think the monobrow kind of suits me--isnt' that scary?:
And here are the breakers. We wanted to go sit on the beach, but the sand was blowing so hard we had to turn around, but not before I got this pic:
We entered the costume contest, but alas, we didn't win. It was cool though because all throughout the race people would ask to take pics with us or others would yell, "Frida! Hey Frida!" which made us happy because at least they knew who we were supposed to be.

See ya there next year!

Stage 2: Finishing

No, not finished. Just finishing. The outside of the drum that is. I'm done sanding. There comes a point in every OCD's life when you just gotta say: ok, enough with the sanding already! I got the majority of the stains out, but not all of them, and you know what? It's fine. No one will notice.

I decided on using tung oil for the finish. Tung oil has been used for centuries by the Chinese, and I read lots of good stuff about it. I did some research on the internet and found a company in Vermont that claims to have perfected the tung oil manufacturing process, and after reading everything on their website, I was sold. Tonight I applied the first of two coats of sealer. The color of the drum totally changed from chalky-pale to a richer, healthier color. This pic doesn't do it justice. I wonder what it will look like when I'm actually applying the tung oil? We'll see! Until then I'll be watching paint (er, sealer) dry.

I LOVE Public Radio

And you should too. Public radio changed my life. When I was in high school everyone around me was listening to those icky top 40 radio stations playing the same 100 songs over and over. I got bored of that and played around with the dial on my radio, turning it all the way to the left into the upper 80's and low 90's region of the dial, and boy did that just rock my world. I listened to jazz and blues and old time music and discovered the best radio station in the whole world, KCRW. It totally opened my world. There is such interesting work being done out there--people taking risks and experimenting, and people from other places making beautiful music, and people who just can't be categorized and niched into this or that genre. It really made me appreciate music. Made me learn how to listen with an open mind and to really enjoy what is out there. When I moved away from home I was sad because I could never find a radio station playing quite the same music as KCRW. Yes, there was college radio, but college radio is dj'd by college students, and although KCRW is technically a college radio station it has honed the craft of bringing cutting edge, little-heard, interesting music to an artform. And in recent years, it has honed the craft of bringing radio to as wide an audience as possible, and with the rise of the internet and data streaming, they are able to broadcast live programming as well as bring their rich archive of music right to your computer, just with the push of a button. Amazing. I can't listen to a show without discovering something spectacular. Yesterday I heard a group who were at one time rebel-fighters-in-the-Sahara-turned-musicians, and I had to learn more about them (used up some of my precious i-credits to download an album). You don't hear that kind of stuff on the top 40s, believe me.

There's a little icon there to the right advocating for Saving Net Radio, since the Suits want to make public radio stations pay steep royalties for bringing little-heard music to the masses. Typical. Contact your congressperson if you can. My beloved Barbara already said she would vote our way. And in the meantime, turn on your radios, people. Listen. Subscribe. Enjoy!

5263!

I'm running Bay to Breakers again this year and this time my lucky number is 5263! Woo hoo! The cool thing they're doing this year is giving out racing chips that you attach to your shoelaces. This way, you can get an accurate time since it records when you actually cross the starting line and when you cross the finish. My official time last year was 16 minutes off since it took me that long to cross the starting line, and yes readers, that's why I did not beat those Kenyans.

So I've been a little flaky with my training this year. I've been trying to get out a couple times a week, but I get tired, or busy or distracted or lazy. But today I tried making up for it all and I ran for a whole hour! Yes that's right, 60 minutes. I'd only intended to run 30 minutes, but then I pushed myself to 45, and once I got to 45 I kept going and when I reached 50, I was like, just keep at it for another 10 minutes and you'll be up to 60! And so I did! And there is my theory of long distance running for you. Trick yourself to get further, and once you get a little further than you had intended it feels like a great accomplishment, and reaching new heights or goals isn't so hard. Plus it helps to have my ipod on me. Time gets measured in songs, and if I can just push through this one song, I'll be seven minutes further along.

I'm paying for it now though. I am so exhausted. I sleep-walked through the grocery store and dinner and I don't know what I'm doing right now blogging. The thing I worry about is that right after the race I have to be at a community outreach thing at RCW and I have to be "on" and chipper and recruiting students for my class or at least being happy and nice. I can do it though, right? I just hope someone nudges me if I start snoring.

Photo Shoot!

Today I experienced my first professional taiko photo-shoot. Special thanks to Bean for putting in all the work in coordinating this. There was a real photographer with umbrella flashy things and big camera with real film. We showed up with costume and make-up (well, I had my one tube of lipstick anyway--I have some other stuff on the way from internetlandia for me to use and practice with). Boy oh boy are photo shoots exhausting. I came home and my friend was like, you look tired. Your eyes are all red. And I was tired. You wouldn't think standing there with a smile on your face could wipe you out, but it did. But it's hard to project such happy or serious or flirty energy for a couple of hours. It wipes you out.

We don't have rehearsal this weekend, and honestly, I don't really want to think about taiko this week. I love it, but I could use the break. Just want to putter around and work on art projects and play video games and maybe go out and watch a movie. Oh, and work on my drum--but that's not really taiko is it? That's hobby and handicraft. Just need the rest, that's all.

Yawn...