The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is proud to present a performance by the San Jose Taiko drumming ensemble and shakuhachi grand master Michael Chikuzen Gould at 7 p.m., Saturday, March 18 at Northwest College’s Nelson Performing Arts Center.
Rhythm and Flow: A Community Performance of Taiko and Shakuhachi will bring two forms of Japanese music together for a rare Northwestern Wyoming Performance.
Sponsored by the Park County Arts Council and the Northwest College Department of Music, the performance features artists with a strong connection to Heart Mountain.
The San Jose Taiko performers come from a part of California whose Japanese American residents were incarcerated during World War II at Heart Mountain. This is their 50th anniversary tour on which they will also appear in Sheridan, Wyoming.
Gould studied shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute, while living in Japan from 1980 to 1997. In 1994, he became one of only a handful of non-Japanese players to hold the title of “Dai Shihan” (Grand Master of Shakuhachi). He now holds two honorary titles above Dai Shihan, which places him at the highest level an artist can attain in the Japanese system. A Cody resident, he is also the husband of Aura Sunada Newlin, the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation’s interim executive director.
This program is made possible through grants from the Wyoming Arts Council and WESTAF through funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wyoming State Legislature.
It is part of the growing relationship between Heart Mountain and San Jose Taiko, which the foundation hopes will endure for the next 50 years and beyond.