In November 2008 the young spanish artist and film maker Pablo Silberschmidt won an important spanish shortfilm festival with his movie OYNO. I am very happy and proud that Pablo invited me to play the appropriate SHAKUHACHI music for his shortfilm. (Click on the picture to see the movie and to hear me playing CHOSHI)
Erst kürzlich / recent performances:03.10.2008 (10/3/2008):
14.06.2008 (6/14/2008):Infos zum Auftritt im buddhistischen Tempel des EKÔ-Hauses der Japanischen Kultur in Düsseldorf, am Japan-Tag (14.06.2008):
EKÔ-Haus der japanischen Kultur e.V. Offizielle Web-Site
These new pictures have been taken at my performance on June 14th at the EKO-Haus in Düsseldorf, when I played SHAKUHACHI for about 500 people on this afternoon.
And here is one of six videos of this performance. This HONKYOKU piece is called
DARANI
You can watch more VIDEOS of this concert here on the video section of my MySpace!
The following video was made at a concert performance in December 2007. I performed SHINTAKASAGO on the Shakuhachi together with Yuko Igarashi playing the Koto and singing.
I really hesitated to publish this video because my playing was by far not as good as it should have been.
TENRI TOURS 2007 - Japan Web-Gallery of Mike and Ela
A lot of people ask me: "Playing SHAKUHACHI? What made you start learning how to play this instrument?" Well, it's quite a funny story. One day my wife came home from shopping with a book she had bought for me. It was “Blowing Zen†by Ray Brooks and had been a special offer. She thought that I could find it interesting because I've been practicing Zen-Meditation. She was absolutely right! That was the day I got infected with the Shakuhachi virus!
After some months of wandering around on the internet, buying and testing more or less unsuitable instuments, learning without personal instruction and searching for a good teacher I finally found Ronnie Nyogetsu Reishin Seldin. He is still teaching me from New York City, USA. And I am very happy and proud to be one of his students.
He is a Koku-An Dai-Shihan (Grand Master's at the level of Kyu-Dan, or 9th level) and received this lincense from Japan's Living National Treasure in shakuhachi, Aoki Reibo. He was also given the name Reishin (Heart/Mind of the Bell) to go along with it. Ronnie is the first non-Japanese to receive this high award. I'm proud to be his student. Thank you very much, Ronnie Sensei. I hope I will be able to learn a lot from him so I can make many steps on the "path of bamboo".