Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Taro in Oz 2011 (part 1)

I've been enjoying the sounds of beautiful bansuri, as brilliantly played by my friend Taro Terahara over the last couple of weeks. As you may have seen on these pages, Tenzin and I have toured with Taro in Japan the last couple of years, and they've just released a beautiful duet CD entitled "Tibet: Awakened Heart". To celebrate its launch, Tenzin invited Taro over to do a big concert along with Tibet2Timbuk2 at the Festival of Tibet which is on at Brisbane Powerhouse next weekend. In the leadup to this concert, Taro and T2T2 did a little tour down to NSW which also included a session at our good friends Elliott and Josie's celebrity wedding.

The tour opened with a small Indian classical concert hosted by Swara Mohini at Garden City Library.


Yuki opened with Sanskrit mantras


Taro played Raga Marwa in vilambit and drut teentaal, followed by Desh and Bhairavi


The following weekend we all drove 8 hours down to Wauchope, near Port Macquarie on the central NSW coast, where we were hosted by Krissa Wilkinson of the Wauchope Arts Council. Krissa had seen us play at Bellingen Global Carnival in October and invited us to come. We were happily surprised when the hall filled up to overflowing full of lovely people keen to go on a musical journey together. It was a brilliant night, one of our best shows ever. To top it off this was our first proper Tibet2Timbuk2 concert to include Taro, who recorded on our CD at a distance in Tokyo a few years back. Magic!





After enjoying our friends Elliott and Josie's massive wedding on the Saturday, where we played after the second ceremony, on the Sunday we had a nice little acoustic concert at Ganesa Gallery in Byron Bay. Many thanks to Garry and Kei who invited us to play after our show in Byron in December. Thanks also to Tahir Qawwal who came and jammed with Taro and I for a lovely Bhairavi ghazal.



No comments: