Odaiko New England performing in "Taiko 10"

Hi,
With a humble apology for not posting sooner. I owe you all about 37 1/8 posts' worth of entries, so I won't dally.
To return to this year's North American Taiko Conference (yes, more than a month later I'm still absolutely soaring off that experience), Odaiko New England had the good fortune to be selected for the Conference's "Taiko 10" concert. This concert is intended to give 10 groups a chance to perform for their taiko friends & peers - for ten minutes each.
We were really thrilled to be chosen...but then we had to think about "what can we play?"
11 of us were attending the conference, and there was no question of performing anything without all 11 of us. However, individually we possessed varying degrees of repertoire, skill sets, and so forth, making the song choice(s) no simple task. Complicating this further is the question, "What can we play that shows our capabilities best?" We could have played "Mahora", which would've filled the 10 minute slot nicely, but that song doesn't feature some of the dramatic choreography that makes taiko so visually compelling.

Mark (our Artistic Director) settled on an arrangement of a familiar (well, familiar to taiko players young and old) piece, "Shin-En". This arrangement has a little power, it has a little style, and there's enough going on to make it entertaining. To add some flair, Mark brought in a ringer, former Ondekoza member Marco Leinhard, to ply his virtuoso shakuhachi and fue skills on our behalf and help stretch the piece to about 8 or 9 minutes in length.

Great!

So, on Friday evening, August 7, we're decked out in our very cool new happi coats, awaiting our turn (next to last) and watching the other taiko groups strut their stuff.

After awhile, we're noticing that some of the groups play for much longer than 10 minutes.

After awhile, we're noticing that some of the groups play outstanding taiko.

Professional-grade taiko.

Some of the soloists (especially members of Maze Daiko) are truly exceptional performers.

{uh-oh}

And we have to follow all that.

{gulp}

Determined to play our best & have fun, we went for it.
Somewhat inexpertly, but with a lot of enthusiasm.
For proof, check out this video link to the Taiko 10 groups' performances (an ironic thing about this is that there were...actually....9 groups for this concert. Not sure how that came about) and see for yourself how we fared. :-)

http://www.scruffyfilms.net/taiko10/Taiko10/Taiko_Videos.html

(note: special thanks to Kathy Fuller & San Diego Taiko for filming it all, and to Elaine Fong of Maze Daiko for providing us with the link!)

Oh yes, as an extra note: a few of my friends who have already seen the video of Odaiko New England have found it amusing that I, the biggest guy in the group, played the smallest drum, the shime-daiko, for this song. ( ! )