Selected Performance Highlights
2024 European Taiko Concert Nights – Dusseldorf
Hosted by Kaiser Drums, these two concerts drew a combined audience of about 1,500 taiko enthusiasts from all over Europe. The show opened with Munedaiko (Italy), followed by Kagemusha Taiko, then Circle Percussion (Netherlands) and an explosive joint finale.
2022 Spirit of the Drum – Exeter
After a break to focus on other projects, such as Shadow Warrior, and postponements due to the Covid Pandemic, Kagemusha Taiko returned with Spirit of the Drum in January 2022.
The show included the premiere of a suite of pieces combining “Gregorian chant” with taiko drums, emerging from Jonathan’s Quo Nunc? project.
2017 Spirit of the Drum – Bridport, London, Bristol, Exeter
Kagemusha Taiko Group were set to headline the 12th UK Taiko Festival in July 2017. With the growing reputation of the UKTF, with increasing numbers of international groups involved, and international audience members, there was a need to create something really special. Also to consider was the breathtaking performance by Ikari Taiko (Kizuna) from Osaka with their headline show from 11th UKTF. The audience in July 2017 would have high expectations.
So, the group prepared an elaborate show, and took it on the road to fine-tune it, first at Bridport Arts Centre, then at Sadlers Wells in London, then the Arnolfini in Bristol, before reaching the Northcott Theatre in Exeter on 1st July.
Two guest stars joined the group for the UKTF performance, Shogo Yoshii (Japan) and Shoji Kameda (USA), fulfilling Jonathan’s long-held ambition to have taiko players from the UK play side-by-side with some of the finest from those 2 countries.
The show finished with a performance of Brother Drum, the fourth wall broken and the audience joining in with the singing.
2016 1st European Taiko Concert Night – Dusseldorf
Kaiser Drums took the bold step of promoting a concert in a major venue that would be performed exclusively by European Taiko groups. With their local following, Wadokyo were an obvious choice, and were joined by Feniks Taiko from Belgium, and Kagemusha Taiko from the UK, who had been earning an increasing international reputation through performance in the USA and Japan, and also at the ever-expanding UK Taiko Festival.
2014 Taiko Nation, Los Angeles, USA
The World Taiko Gathering took place this year, over 3 days in August in “Little Tokyo” in Los Angeles. It brought together taiko groups and players from every continent on which taiko is played.
Kagemusha Taiko were invited to represent taiko in Europe as part of the three “Taiko Nation” concerts that took place in the Aratani Theatre. Group members also led workshops as part of the broader event.
2013 Kagemusha Taiko, Japan
Kagemusha Taiko were invited by the Nippon Taiko Foundation to give a series of concert performances in north-east Japan, including Fukushima and Sendai, as part of a program to “raise the spirits of survivors of the great tsunami and earthquake disaster of the previous year.
Group members also led taiko workshops in elementary and junior high schools in the area – British taiko players teaching Japanese schoolchildren…
2012 TEDx Exeter
The organisers of the inaugural TEDx Exeter in 2012 invited Kagemusha Taiko to join the event, giving two short performances.
The invitation was repeated in 2017, from which this photo is taken.
2011 North American Taiko Conference, Stanford
The first North American Taiko Conference took place in 1997. Its immediate success led to it becoming a biennial event and the largest gathering of taiko practitioners in the world.
In 2011, the NATC was hosted at Stanford University in Northern California, with more than 500 taiko players attending. One of the main attraction of the Conference is the “Taiko Ten” concert, at which ten groups each play for ten minutes. This year, Kagemusha Taiko became the first European group to perform at the event.
2008 Music for Youth School Prom – Royal Albert Hall, London
Music for Youth organise a series of events through the year. Initially, there are “Regional Festivals” at which all kinds of groups of young people can perform, from choirs to orchestras, from brass bands to pop groups, from string quartets to percussion ensembles. The best of these are then selected to perform at the National Festival of Music for Youth, in Birmingham, where the groups are categorised: Kagemusha Junior Taiko Group therefore performed on the day dedicated to “Traditional and International Music”. The third and final round, was the School Prom at the Royal Albert Hall, playing to about 5,500 people. Kagemusha Junior Taiko played at the School Prom in 2003, 2006, 2008 (this photo) and 2010.
2006 New Year’s Eve – Brindisi, Italy
Excluding corporate events (Monte Carlo, Paris, Milan), Kagemusha Taiko Group’s first international performance took place on New Year’s Eve in Brindisi in southern Italy. The performance was a huge success and further Italian concerts followed in 2007, in Angera and San Giovanni in Persiceto.
2004 Joint Concerts with Grand Master Daihachi Oguchi & Osuwa Daiko, London and Exeter
Daihachi Oguchi is the man generally credited with having created the first-ever taiko group, in late 1950s Japan. He was later designated by the Japanese government as a “holder of important, intangible Cultural Properties”, otherwise known as a “national treasure”.
Although he and his group, Osuwa Daiko, had performed in many different countries, they did not perform in the UK until 2003 when, at the invitation of Jonathan Kirby, they joined Kagemusha Taiko for a series of concerts. The first of these were part of the Exeter Summer Festival, the final concert was in Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank, as part of the Rhyhtmsticks Festival.
At the end of the final concert, Grand Master Oguchi presented Jonathan with his tetsu-zutsu saying “taiko is beautiful, but without metal percussion, taiko is like a forest without birdsong. Please use this tetsu-zutsu in your compositions.”
21 years later, Kagemusha Taiko Group (and Tano Taiko) still use Grand Master Oguchi’s tetsu-zutsu.
2003 UK Concerts
The first theatre shows promoted by Kagemusha Taiko were in 2002, at the Brewhouse Theatre in Taunton, and the Tobacco Factory in Bristol. The name of the first group was, in fact, Taikomotion. However, it had become obvious that “Kagemusha Taiko present Taikomotion” wouldn’t tell anyone anything about what they were going to see, or why they should go to see it.
So it was that the theatre show was given a name, Spirit of the Drum, associated with the name of the company, Kagemusha Taiko. And the show was promoted with posters based on photos of group members playing taiko, to illustrate what was on offer. It worked, because “Spirit of the Drum” played to sell-out audiences for many years. In consequence, the name “Taikomotion” fell out of use, and the group eventually became known as “Kagemusha Taiko.
2000 The Millennium Dome – London
Jonathan Kirby began teaching adult taiko classes at the Exeter Phoenix in February 1999. From these, two groups would eventually emerge, but this was a process that took the best part of 2 years. On the way, the leading players were gathered together for a performance to “launch a summer season of celebrations” at the Millennium Dome, in Greenwich, London. The venue was later to become the 02 Arena, where Kagemusha Taiko Group would perform in 2010 along with 30 Seconds to Mars. But things were much more basic in 2000. This was simply the first performance outside Exeter.
