“December's child is Sir Andrew Davis. And Sir Andrew Davis Lane in Toronto owes its name to John Sharpe, Archival & Research Assistant with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, who sent an application for changing the lane name. Best regards, Pablo Fernandez.” (WholeNote reader)

If you were all ALONE (in the shower, driving) and could sing along to any recording with complete abandon what would you choose? The Circus Band by Charles Ives.

UPCOMING … ?

I am particularly excited about the concert that I am doing on my birthday, February 2. I am conducting Wagner and my favourite 20th-century composer Alban Berg. Between now and the summer I will be conducting four weeks with the Toronto Symphony. I’m also looking forward to doing the Brahms Double Concerto with Jonathan Crow and Joseph Johnson, Mahler Symphony 7, and collaborating with Louis Lortie, whom I first worked with on the TSO’s Japan and China tour in 1978.

Any new recordings, DVD or film projects? Due for release shortly is Berlioz L’Enfance du Christ.

Sir Andrew Davis is the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s conductor laureate and was the orchestra’s music director from 1975-1988. He stepped in while the TSO’s music director search led to Peter Oundjian, and subsequently has been their regular and beloved guest. He was then named the TSO’s interim artistic director for 2018-2020 during the transition from Oundjian’s leadership to that of the newly appointed music director Gustavo Gimeno.

An organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, before taking up conducting, the young Andrew Davis had in fact been to Toronto in 1967 for an organ convention, and taken second prize in an improvisation competition at Grace Church on-the-Hill, long before May 1975 when he first conducted the TSO.

With a face familiar to generations of Canadians, and a Toronto laneway named in his honour, Sir Andrew has probably conducted all of the world’s major orchestras, opera companies and international festivals over the past 45 years. Today he is also music director and principal conductor of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; also conductor laureate of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor emeritus of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic; and former music director of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. A substantial award-winning discography documents his remarkable career.

ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD PHOTO…

Was the photo taken for some particular occasion or purpose? My guess is that I was 11 -- it was a school photo taken when I entered Watford Boys Grammar School.

When you look at the photo today, what do you think about? What I think about is that it was probably about 1955 and I loved the 1950s. I think things have gone downhill steadily since!

Where did you live as a child? I was born in a temporary wartime hospital in Ashridge, in the country of Hertfordshire, in 1944. But until I was seven we lived in Chesham, which is in Buckinghamshire.

What did your parents do to earn a living? My father Robert (Bob) worked at a printer’s as a compositor (i.e. he set type). He also played in the local football team and was a bell ringer at St. Mary’s Church. My mother Joyce worked as a clerk in a grocery store before I came along, thereafter she was a full-time mother.

Who lived in your childhood home? Any musicians? My parents, my sister Jill, and my brothers Martin and Tim. My mother had studied the piano when she was a girl but she didn’t play anymore. My father sang in the church choir. They loved music but they weren’t professional musicians.

Your absolute earliest memory of hearing music? My mother singing me lullabies.

And making music yourself? I started to play the piano when I was five because my parents figured that I had some musical talent. Then from the age of 11, I not only did music at my grammar school, but on Saturday mornings I would take the Tube to the Royal Academy of Music for four hours of music lessons (piano, ear training). I did that for about six years. And when I was about 12 I started playing regularly with a cellist classmate. I was also a boy soprano and sang in the local church choir. I particularly remember singing Hear My Prayer by Mendelssohn. There was one night I sang the solo in church on Sunday evening. I came out afterwards and someone had stolen my bicycle. I remember saying to my parents, “The godless have come fast and stolen my bicycle!”

What can you remember about a first music teacher? We moved when I was ten, and I don’t think I had a teacher until I was ten, then I studied [piano] with a lady called Ivy Weston, who was kind of vicious with the ruler if you didn’t play with your hands in the correct position. She never used it on me but my poor sister got it!

Do you remember an event at which you first performed for an audience (other than your family or a teacher)? They used to have these competitive music festivals. I started entering these and I usually won. I played with this cellist and we’d do little concerts for an audience.

Where did you attend high school? Watford Boys Grammar School.

Do you remember when you first thought of conducting as something you’d like to try? I hadn’t thought about it and then there was a string orchestra of teachers and former students at my grammar school. They put on a little concert and there was a piece that was tricky for them to play by themselves. They asked me to conduct to help keep them together. On another occasion I conducted Haydn’s Divertimento, and then I thought, “Oh, I kind of like this.” Then I attended a two-week program where George Hurst, who was a very good teacher, basically taught me stick technique.

And right after high school, what happened next? I auditioned for the position of Organ Scholar at King’s College Cambridge. In the year between winning the position and starting, I stayed a few extra weeks at high school to do advanced examinations in ancient Greek. Then for about two months I was the music teacher at a school in a slightly rough neighborhood where I tried out several different composers on them, like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky, but didn’t get a real hit with them until I played them some Bartók! And then I went for two months to Holland to study organ improvisation with a very good friend and colleague of my main organ teacher whose name is Peter Hurtford, the organist of the Cathedral of St Albans. He then handed the running of the music of St Albans Cathedral to me for a month, while he did a recital tour of Australia. Then I came back and started my four years at Cambridge, which involved playing for all the almost-daily services and getting up at the crack of dawn to go to the choir school and teach the boy choristers the music for the day’s services.

Can you suggest experiences from your childhood or teen years that significantly helped to form your adult musical preferences? Well, I suppose before I started studying at Royal Academy I didn’t know about any composers after Brahms. There was a man called Graham Treacher who was himself a young conductor. He taught us ear training and history of music. It was through him that I heard my first note of 20th-century music, in this case Stravinsky. It was a transformative moment in my life. I remember thinking, “I need to get to know more 20th-century music.” I went to my local record store and bought a recording, a 10-inch LP, of a violin concerto by a composer I’d never heard of – Alban Berg. I instantly fell in love with it and Berg became my favourite composer of the 20th century.

Do you remember when you began to think of yourself as a career musician? When I thought about going to university, I went at the instigation of my Latin and Greek professor to take an entrance exam for New College Oxford (which was new in about 1370). I think I did slightly disappointingly in my exam and it became clear that music was the way I should go.

AND TODAY …

Are there musical children in your extended family? My son is a composer.

How does making and/or hearing music fit into your current personal home life, and among your extended family? It wreaks havoc with it! I travel a lot. But, my only child is grown up and living somewhere else, and my wife is very understanding having been a professional musician herself. She understands the pressures that come with the job.

Suppose a friendly child asks what work you do? As a matter of fact, I have a story where this happened to me. I was about to conduct Last Night of the Proms in Royal Albert Hall and was staying in a flat at an apartment of a friend of mine. I went to go get something to eat at a fish and chips restaurant. They basically had lots of big tables and benches. This mother and child came up to sit next to me – the kid must have been 12 or something – and he said, “What do you do?” And I said, “I’m a musician.” And he said, “Well, what do you play?” And I said, “I’m the guy with the stick that conducts the orchestra and tonight I’m conducting Last Night of the Proms in Royal Albert Hall.” And the boy said, “Well, you must not be very famous…” And I laughed and said, “What makes you say that?” And he said, “Well if you were famous you wouldn’t be eating fish and chips!”

What would you say to young parents hoping their young children will grow up to love and make music? I would say to them, “Give them as much exposure to classical music as you can, especially by taking them to live concerts and opera performances. You can’t start them too young.”

A full-length version of this interview is in progress, please come back soon!

Pat LaBarbera grew up in Mt. Morris NY, the eldest of three musician brothers: the other two are drummer and composer Joe LaBarbera, and John LaBarbera, a trumpet player, composer and music educator. An award-winning soprano, alto and tenor saxophonist, flutist, clarinetist, composer and jazz educator, LaBarbera was a member of the Buddy Rich Big Band from 1967 to 1974, and also Woody Herman’s band, before moving to Canada in 1974. A well-loved member of the music faculty at Toronto’s Humber College, some of his former students, now colleagues, are Alex Dean, Vern Dorge, John Johnson, Mike Murley, and Kirk MacDonald.

Every September for over 25 years, Toronto jazz audiences anticipate Pat LaBarbera and Kirk MacDonald’s Annual Birthday Tribute to John Coltrane. This year’s fine celebration was standing room only at the Rex Jazz and Blues Bar (Sept 20 to 22) with an additional show at the Jazz Room in Waterloo on Coltrane’s birthday (Sept 23). LaBarbera and MacDonald, with Neil Swainson on bass and Brian Dickinson on piano, were joined by Joe LaBarbera, who flew in for the occasion. And finally, in response to years of requests for a Coltrane Tribute record, they made live recordings of this year’s Tribute for release sometime next year.

Working musicians in your family? My father told me a childhood memory of his mother taking him to a fortune teller in Sicily where a bird picked paper fortunes out of a box – his said he would be a musician. My father was a stationary engineer for the state of New York who started out working for the railway and then ran a power plant for a hospital. My mother was a nurse at the hospital – I think that’s how they met. But my father was also a musician who conducted and played in bands. We had all these instruments in our house: tubas, three pianos, an upright bass, violins, all the saxophones, trumpets. He learned to play first the piccolo and then the baritone horn in a Catholic orphanage band. He wasn’t an orphan but when his father died he and his brother went to this orphanage where boys were taught a trade. My father learned to be a tailor but then he got into the band – and after the horn came the clarinet, piano, accordion…

What’s your earliest memory of hearing music? That would be students coming to the house to take lessons with my father who also taught music in the house. Young people would come to the house with instruments and they’d go down to the furnace room where the lessons happened, and I’d sit at the top of the basement stairs to watch. I’d have been about five maybe. I guess he charged about 50 cents …

What was your first instrument? The clarinet, and then the alto sax.

Your early experiences of making music with other people? We had a family band – in the 50s and into the 60s. We played at weddings and parties and talent shows. The focus wasn’t jazz – that came later. We played pop music from the time and a lot of ethnic music: Mt. Morris was pretty much half Sicilian and half Irish. There are pictures of me playing shows as young as eight and a half or nine, around 1953. The family band finished when I started high school where we started forming our own jazz groups and bands. My mother and father went on to work together in a country band, and my mother eventually stopped playing. My father continued playing drums with a German band into his 80s until he didn’t want to drive late at night.

What about music at school? It was my high school music teacher who really got me interested in jazz. He was a bass player – playing dance bands. The school band played for Christmas and spring concerts but then got some of us to perform in a small jazz group, my brothers included. He had this record collection which he brought to school and he’d allow us to take records home, or go to a listening room instead of a study hall. He had Miles Davis’ Someday My Prince Will Come. We’d save lunch money and take a trip to Rochester to buy a record – so one of those was On Green Dolphin Street. I will always remember sitting in that listening room and Coltrane soloing – really affected by that.…

Ben Heppner’s unmistakable voice, warm and relaxed, is instantly familiar to CBC listeners as the host of Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, and Backstage with Ben Heppner, sharing his great love for this music and a wealth of stories about the musical lives involved. Heppner first gained national attention in 1979 as winner of the CBC Talent Festival and went on to become one of the world’s most celebrated dramatic tenors, renowned for heroic performances in a wide range of the most challenging operatic and concert repertoire – Wagner in particular. A Companion of the Order of Canada, Heppner is the recipient of numerous other awards and honours as a performer and recording artist. The Ben Heppner Vocal Academy, a TDSB elementary school in Scarborough is named for him, as is the main street in Dawson Creek BC – Ben Heppner Way.

Heppner announced his retirement from singing in 2014, but still performs occasionally. This summer he will headline the Lowville Festival on June 9, alongside the Lowville Festival Choir, and he has two summer festival engagements with the Toronto Mass Choir in a gospel program called “O Happy Day,” concerts which return to the music of his childhood. Heppner is the youngest of nine children born in 1956 to a Mennonite farming family in Murrayville BC (now part of the city of Langley).Today he lives in Toronto with his wife, Karen.

Where were you born? My passport says I was born in Murrayville BC. Very few people know where that is. It’s actually part of the City of Langley these days.

Were there any working musicians in your childhood family? No. My dad (Ben) worked out in the barn and the fields and my mom (Kae) held down the fort with the kids and domestic concerns.

About your childhood home and family life? I was what people called an “afterthought.” (After, they wished they’d thought.). I’m five years younger than my next sibling. It’s complicated but, by the time I was nine or ten I had the house all to myself. My family moved to the Peace River region of BC when I was two and a half. First we lived in a remote place called Clayhurst. But after I burned down the house we relocated to the bustling hamlet of Doe River. My dad retired from farming when I was eight years old and we moved to the metropolis of Dawson Creek. (Trust me it’s not like the TV show!) I graduated from the South Peace Senior Secondary School in 1973.

How did music fit into your childhood? In my childhood home you would have been given away to another family if you couldn’t sing. We sang in church, doing the dishes and even driving in the car. Music was something that was made not listened to. There was no record player at home: I heard vinyl LPs only at other people’s houses, or the library. It was at the library that I found things to satisfy my music cravings.

First recollections of making music? When I was about three my family was asked to sing in church. I practised with my Mom and my brother and sisters all week long. When it was time for my family to sing – I was told to stay behind in the pew with Dad. I was bummed. But once the music started, I stood like a tin soldier on the church pew and belted out the alto part. I remember a solo with the kids’ choir at church: I stuffed my hands in my pockets and refused to look up.

What was your first instrument, if any, other than your own voice? I started playing trumpet in seventh grade and made my way to the lower-sounding instruments French horn and euphonium.

Do you remember seeing an orchestra for the first time? An opera? I remember standing in front of the TV and imitating the conductor. Remember – I grew up in Dawson Creek – so there were no shows to see. Quite frankly I detested opera. It wasn’t until I started to train at the U of T Opera School that I started to like it.

Do you remember thinking you’d do something else? After the policeman/fireman stage I thought of being a minister. That’s why I went to theological school first. After a year of theology in Regina I mounted my campaign to conquer the world from the University of BC. I thought I would be a high school music teacher.

How did music fit into your own children’s lives? We sang a lot – like when I was growing up. I made the kids take piano lessons and we encouraged any type of music they liked. Country music is forbidden, however.

Does teaching/mentoring fit into your current musical life? No. I did a year subbing in for a sabbatical leave at McGill. I had fun with the students but didn’t feel the urge to do more.

Where does making / hearing music fit into your current personal and family life at home and in your community? A couple of times a year we have a community get-together and sing. Christmas carols and hymns are the main thing.

If you were driving ALONE and could sing along to ANY recording, what would you choose? Something by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

Andrea Ludwig was born and raised in Regina SK. Her mother was a nurse and her father was a German Lutheran pastor. In her childhood home were three brothers and two sisters who each played an instrument and they all sang. Their mother entered them in the Kiwanis Music Festival as a small ensemble “kind of like the Von Trapps.” After high school Ludwig moved to Toronto with the intent of working for a year or two and then going to U of T for piano but entered the vocal performance program three years later.

Today the JUNO-nominated mezzo-soprano performs in concert with a wide range of presenters and has sung numerous roles with the Canadian Opera Company, Edmonton Opera, Philadelphia Opera, San Francisco Opera and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. Recently The Landlady in The Overcoat (Canstage/Tapestry) she’s currently singing the same role at Vancouver Opera. Upcoming recordings include Galicians 2 with the Ukrainian Art Song Project and Ana Sokolovićs Sirens for the ATMA label (summer 2018).

Andrea Ludwig lives in Toronto’s Oakwood Village, with her 12-year-old son Lucas, who is in Grade 7 and sings with the Canadian Children's Opera Company. Beyond music, some of her other pleasures/pastimes include playing the piano, reading, exercising and binge-watching Netflix.

Suppose a friendly fellow asks what you do for a living? This is how it usually goes … Well, I'm an opera/classical singer. They are often really interested but not always understanding how I could possibly make a living doing that. I tell them that I have many contracts throughout the year and that I also am an accompanist for school choirs and a vocal coach.

Do you remember that childhood photo being taken? I do! I loved to dance to records in my living room. My uncle, Gerald Langner, who used to be the head of choral music at the University of Saskatchewan, happened to be visiting that day and saw how much fun I was having. So I danced to his playing the guitar! Feeling carefree, joyful, content.

Were there working musicians in your childhood family? My uncle [in the photo] was a choir director – first at LCBI, a private school in Outlook SK, and then head of music at U of S. I have a cousin in Germany who is a cellist with an orchestra.

Your earliest memories of hearing music? My mom told me that as a baby I would bop my head in precise rhythm to whatever music was playing. It seems as though my childhood centred around music at home, at school and at church. I think we listened to CBC Radio a fair amount but primarily it was through records at home and of course singing in choirs at church and in high school.

First recollection of making music? Playing with my toys and making up songs as the toys went along on their toy business. I also loved sitting at the piano and dreaming about taking lessons. I made my singing debut at age two on audio cassette, singing a German Christmas carol, with my siblings humming in harmony in the background. My Mom taught me basic little songs on the piano and we would play duets together. This was before I started formal lessons.

I started piano lessons at the age of four.

A first music teacher? My piano teacher’s name was Miss Stinson, who also happened to be in the same piano classes with Stuart Hamilton (while they were growing up in Regina). She used to “threaten to sit on me” if I ever forgot my books or if my fingernails were too long! Good memories of her were playing student/teacher duets at Kiwanis and always winning First Place.

When did you first perform for an audience? I started competing at Kiwanis when I was eight-years-old and then started accompanying choirs at church and school when I was 15.

Experiences that helped to form your appetite for staged works? Definitely … going on tours with my high school choir, both as a singer and an accompanist. When I was in Grade 10, I played piano in the band for the school's production of Fiddler on the Roof, and I remember how thrilling it was to be a part of that.

When did you begin to think of music as a career? I was still in high school. I always wanted to be a concert pianist. I loved to sing as well but at the time, piano was my thing. Quite honestly, I thought being a pianist was the be all end all. I never dreamt that one day my vocation would be as a singer. At 19 I started voice lessons and a spark was started.

Does teaching/mentoring fit into your current musical life? Absolutely. I really enjoy working with children's choirs. I currently play for and mentor a few choirs at a public school in the city. Full disclosure: it's how I met my partner, who is the music teacher there. His former accompanist quit last summer and a friend recommended me to him. I am also starting to do more vocal coaching with people of all ages.

Where does music fit into your life at home?. My home is my workspace so making music and hearing music is ever present, both for work and pleasure. Both of my kids have been, and are, involved in music. My 20-year-old daughter used to sing with the CCOC and at our church with Eleanor Daley. She also enjoys composing music on her guitar. My son sings with the CCOC and has the lead role in the world premiere of The Monkiest King, written by Alice Ping Ho. He also plays the trumpet in his school band.

What would you say to parents hoping their young children will grow up to love and make music? Nurture their love for music. Be encouraging and supportive. Know that music is a universal language, that everything we do in life is interconnected and music always ties into every facet of our lives. Whether they decide to be a performer or a music educator, know that it is a worthy vocation.

If you were all ALONE (in the shower, driving) and could sing along to ANY recording, what would you choose? Oh boy that's a tough one. I would say that I would sing along like a crazy woman to anything by Heart or Billy Joel. If it's classical, Susan Graham singing the songs of Reynaldo Hahn and pretty much anything with Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson.

UPCOMING?

Andrea Ludwig will be the soprano soloist for Handel's Israel in Egypt with the Bach Elgar Choir May 26 and 27

Then she’ll be performing in The Overcoat with Vancouver Opera.

Ukrainian Art Song Project’s Spring Salon Concert is May 24 at Gallery 345: "From the Roots of Ukrainian Art Song to a Galician Experience.” – work by six composers sung by Andrea Ludwig, Laura McAlpine and Andrew Skitho, with Robert Kortgaard at the piano.

Then she’ll be singing with Soundstreams on June 6 and 7 - Little Match Girl Passion by David Lang and I Think We Are Angels by James Rolfe.

Ludwig’s most recent recording is Schubert Orchestrations with Symphony Nova Scotia under the direction of Bernhard Gueller, which recently won Best Classical Recording at the Nova Scotia Music Awards and is up for Best Classical at East Coast Music Awards.

Her upcoming release is Galicians 2 with the Ukrainian Art Song Project (for August 2018). This summer she will record Ana Sokolovićs Sirens for the ATMA label.

Kiyoshi Nagata lives in Scarborough, but spends most of his time in Richmond Hill caring for his mother, or in downtown Toronto with his musician girlfriend. Besides living and breathing taiko music, Kiyoshi religiously goes to the gym each morning to work out and clear his head and prepare for each day. During the school year, he teaches taiko drumming at U of T's Faculty of Music. Kiyoshi loves drinking sake, red wine and craft beer on a nightly basis (not all three at the same time), and enjoys trying new local restaurants usually on Sunday evenings. On his off days, which are rare, his favourite things to do are to walk along Toronto Islands, or catch a small independent movie with his girlfriend.

Kiyoshi Nagata is the artistic director of the taiko drum ensemble Nagata Shachu, formed in 1998. Rooted in the folk-drumming traditions of Japan the ensemble makes innovative and exciting music that continues to create a new voice for the taiko. These are physically demanding, spirited performances that feature diverse repertoire for taiko (including the massive O-Daiko drum), bamboo flutes, the three-stringed shamisen, gongs, cymbals, shakers and wood blocks.

Nagata’s own 35-year journey includes studies in both Canada and Japan. He has taught a credit course in taiko at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music since 1998. He also established a public taiko course at the RCM in Toronto and is regularly invited by universities and community taiko groups to conduct workshops and present lectures, Nagata composes and performs taiko music for dance, theatre, film and radio and continues to collaborate with artists from all genres of music including traditional Japanese instrumentalists.

Born and raised in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Nagata’s father worked in the auto fleet department of Ontario Hydro and his mother was a secretary/bookkeeper. He says that his parents always listened to Japanese enka music (a popular traditional/ballad style) but his father also liked to Nat King Cole and Benny Goodman. He attended Bayview Secondary school in Richmond Hill, graduated in political science from U of T, and then moved to Japan to further his taiko training.

About your childhood photo…? This was definitely taken at Halloween. I guess I was a banjo-playing Mountie! I never played the banjo but it was probably the very first instrument that I ever owned. The photo reminds me of a very happy childhood with loving parents. Coming from a working-class family, we didn’t have much, but we had a lot of fun.

First memories of hearing music? My parents had one of those large furniture phonograph consoles that I would always play records on. I do specifically remember listening to 78 rpm records of Old MacDonald and Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head by BJ Thomas. My grandmother played the three-stringed shamisen, and my mother and three sisters did Japanese dance with it.

Where did hearing music generally fit into your life as a child? I was always listening to the radio especially 1050 CHUM (when they were still a pop station) and would set up my portable tape recorder against the speakers to record my favourite songs. In high school, vinyl was king and I had a great sound system in my room in which I would escape from the rest of the world listening to Supertramp, Rush, Led Zepplin and AC/DC! My musical tastes changed over the years, listening to more new romantic 80s music as well as attending many Toronto Symphony Orchestra concerts throughout university.

Your very first recollection of making music? I remember clearly, the first time I made music was playing the taiko drum at age 12 at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre. I learned a simple song called Don Doko Bayashi, which was a simple four-bar pattern repeated over and over again. It was exhilarating. Later I played tenor sax in the school band: my first music teacher in high school, Mr. Flemming, was very encouraging and kind. In fact, he tried to persuade me to audition for the National Youth Orchestra. I really enjoyed playing in the high school band where the main objective was to be unified and sound as one. This was a very appealing concept for me. When I started learning taiko, I became obsessed with the philosophy of working together to create something new, exciting and in the moment.

Do you remember an event at which you first performed for an audience? My very first performance was at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square in 1982 where the Japanese community held its annual Obon Festival (to honor the dead). That’s when the performing bug hit me!

Can you think of experiences that helped to form your appetite for staged performance, and for the multi-genre collaborative music which is part of what you do today? My first time seeing the Kodo drummers from Japan in the early 1980s really set the stage for me (no pun intended) to consider the possibilities of making music and performing as a career. I was entranced by the fact that these drummers were making music using their entire bodies. The combination of physical strength, spirit and musicality had a lasting impression on me. Another concert which really opened my mind was to see John Wyre’s (NEXUS) concert of World Drums. That helped me to understand the potential of making music together without the need of spoken language or a score.

Do you remember when you began to think of yourself as a career musician? When I returned from studying with the Kodo drummers in 1994, I set out to become a freelance taiko drummer. It was the first time where I actually understood that my livelihood depended on how much work I could get from performing, teaching and composing. It was a little scary, but I was young at the time and I guess a little bit fearless or naïve. I’ve never seriously considered doing anything else. In my early 40s, I felt like I reached the point of no return. I had no other skill sets besides drumming and could think of nothing else that I wanted to do.

How does teaching/mentoring fit into your current musical life? Teaching has always kept me grounded. It gets me back to the fundamentals which is so important for what I do. I very much enjoy sharing my passion and knowledge to the next generation of taiko drummers as well as recreational beginners as well!

Where music fit into your current personal life at home? After a very stressful day, there is nothing more I enjoy than coming home and playing music (anything from Sade, Van Morrison, Neil Young, David Sylvian etc) on my system while sipping a glass of red wine!

What could you say to parents hoping their young children will grow up to love and make music? Be encouraging and supportive. I could not have become the musician I am today without my parents’ help and some financial support along the way. Your child will not necessarily choose to become a professional musician, but will be much more rounded and fulfilled by learning and playing music.

If you were all ALONE (in the shower, driving) and could sing along with complete abandon to ANY recording, what would you choose? Nessun Dorma (Puccini)!

UPCOMING Nagata Shachu engagements

April 15, 8pm: guest artists with the Esprit Orchestra performing the Canadian premiere of Maki Ishii’s Mono-Prism for taiko and orchestra at Koerner Hall;

May 4, 7pm: performance at Toronto Public Library – Parkdale branch;

May 24, 6:30pm: performance at Toronto Public Library – Palmerston branch;

May 28, 7pm: performance at Toronto Public Library – Fairview branch;

June 2, 8pm: Harboufront Theatre Centre: Nagata Shachu’s 2017-2018 season finale concert “Shamisen X Taiko,” a collaboration with shamisen virtuoso Masahiro Nitta (Japan).