Taku Hirano’s career as a professional percussionist is on the fast track and has been called a phenomenon by both his peers and the artists that he has worked for. His meteoric rise has led him to become one of the top-call percussionists on the touring and recording circuit.
Taku has toured the world with Fleetwood Mac, Whitney Houston, Bette Midler, Stevie Nicks, Lionel Richie, Isaac Hayes, and Lindsey Buckingham. He has also performed with Stevie Wonder, LeAnn Rimes, Sean “Diddy†Combs, Mary J. Blige, Patti Labelle, Barry Manilow, Kenny Loggins, Chaka Khan, Brandy, The Neville Brothers, Wyclef Jean, Don Henley, and Sheila E. Taku has recorded with artists as diverse as Dr. Dre, Fleetwood Mac, Whitney Houston, The Temptations, Nelly Furtado, Jay-Z, Stevie Nicks, and Lionel Richie, in addition to working on numerous major motion picture and television scores and soundtracks. Several of these recordings have won Grammy, Emmy, and American Music awards. Taku has also worked with notable jazz, jazz-fusion, and contemporary-jazz artists such as Gary Burton, Joe Zawinul, Jonathan Butler, Tom Scott, Bennie Maupin, and with gospel artists, Yolanda Adams, Bebe Winans, and Cece Winans.
Taku has studied intensively since the age of nine in Classical percussion and drumset, studying with the principal timpanist of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and with some of the top-call session drummers and percussionists in Los Angeles. Since his mid-teens, he has studied the traditional secular and sacred percussion styles of Cuba, Brazil, West Africa, The Middle East, and India, going as far as studying under master percussionists from Cuba, Northern (Hindustani) and Southern (Karnatak) India, Ghana (Dagbamba and Ewe styles), and Japan, enrolling in a graduate studies program in World Music performance at California Institute of the Arts, and attending the Escuela Nacional de Artes (National School of the Arts) in Havana, Cuba. He also received his Bachelor of Music degree cum laude as one of the first hand percussion principals from Berklee College of Music, spending 4 years under the tutelage of master percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo.
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***************************************** TAKU IS THE WINNER OF THE 2007 DRUM! MAGAZINE DRUMMIE AWARDS FOR "PERCUSSION RISING STAR" AS WELL AS A RUNNER UP FOR THE "ROCK/POP PERCUSSIONIST" CATEGORY!a img{}a:hover img{}body{scrollbar-arrow-color:660066;scrollbar-Track-Color
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