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2023 Newsletter

Summer is coming to an end, and so is our wild 10th year of Taiko Kai. As we begin to welcome the new 11th generation of the club, we'd like to look back on all the accomplishments, fantastic events, and spectacular performances we took part in over the past year.

With remote learning now over, in Autumn of 2022 we welcomed 13 new performing members, which took our club to a grand total of 28. With these members we performed all across the greater Seattle area. Some noteworthy performances were for Kubota Garden's Summer Thunder, Seijin-shiki USA, Sakuracon, and FIUTS's CulturalFest at Benaroya Hall. Back on UW campus we also played for the Seattle Cherry Blossom Run, the Japanese Student Association's Matsuri, and many more student-led organizations. In May our members travelled to the University of California, Davis for the Intercollegiate Taiko Invitational, to learn directly from taiko professionals and play with the other college groups along the West Coast. It's been a busy year for Taiko Kai!

2023's Spring Concert, "Journey Through Ji-Bli" was Taiko Kai's largest performance ever, with over 60 performers and 300 attendees. Through this concert we celebrated Taiko Kai's 10th anniversary, and with a bang! We had a wonderful time performing our skits and songs together with so many taiko players from all around the Pacific Northwest. We are grateful to Seattle University's Hidaka Taiko and Taiko Kai's alumni for playing with us and making a concert of this scale possible. We'd also like to give a special thanks to founding member Kim Matsudaira for coming and speaking to kick off the concert. We couldn't have asked for a better 10th anniversary.

We'd like to further recognize all the people who supported Taiko Kai throughout the last year. Thank you to our friends and family, Taiko Kai alumni, the Ethnic Cultural Center, and everyone who came to watch our performances. We also couldn't have done it without the help of our hardworking 2022-2023 officer team: Noa, Anna, Jason C, Asa, Lily, Jason A, Kaila, and Jennifer. Between practices, bonding events, and performances, this past year has been a blast for the club, and we're looking forward to another year of even more excitement. We're committed to continue training to improve our skill and providing quality taiko performances while having a great time. Come check us out in 2024!

Interested in becoming part of our community? Join our discord!
Also help support the 2024 East Coast Taiko Conference hosted by Gendo Taiko!

SPRING CONCERT 2023: Journey Through Ji-Bli

Full concert video:

Tickets on sale NOW for our 10th Anniversary Spring Concert: 

We’re excited to announce our 10th Anniversary Spring Concert on Sunday, April 30th from 3 pm-5:30 pm in the Roethke Auditorium (Kane 130)! Come join us on a journey through Studio Ji-bli! 

The performance will feature Taiko Kai alumni as well as Seattle U's Hidaka Taiko as guest performers! 

Tickets are on sale NOW at: https://taiko-kai.square.site/ 

Interested in becoming part of our community? 

 Check us out at UW’s RSO Fair on Friday, September 30th, and sign up to come to our yearly fall workshop in the Central Plaza Parking Garage on 10/8 at 2:30 pm!  https://forms.gle/5iDpNdp9sLn3EfHH7 or join our discord!  https://discord.gg/t6m9JSg3px

2022 Newsletter

Interested in seeing us perform or booking Taiko Kai for a performance? Check out our performance and booking pages for information!  


After an eventful summer of performances at the Seattle Buddhist Temple Dharma School, TOPS, and Volunteer Park Amphitheater opening along with preparations for our club’s 10th year at the University of Washington, we’d like to highlight all that happened this past year for Taiko Kai!  

Like with many UW RSOs, we spent the past 2 and a half years navigating running our club virtually. In October we held our first in-person Fall Workshop since 2019, welcoming many new students into our ninth generation of members, and ended up with a performing group of 20 members! In winter term we performed at FIUTS’s Culturalfest, the first in-person performance for many of our members and soon after we also performed at the UW’s basketball halftime game against UCLA. 

2022 FIUTS Culturalfest PerformanceLeft to right: Anna Yates, Michael Duan, Jason Aochi, Sam Mak, Jon Kim, Daniel Liu, Joanne Liu, Noa Roth, Owen Tanaka, Kie Shin, Souma Yabuki, Lily Lockwood, Alina Butler, Asa Madarang, Jason Chinn
UW Men's Basketball Halftime PerformanceTop Row Left to Right: Anna Yates, Asa Madarang, Jon Kim, Jason Chinn, Jason AochiBottom Row Left to Right: Noa Roth, Sam Mak, Alina Butler, Lily Lockwood, Owen Tanaka

With in-person practices came in-person bonding events! Outside of practices and performances we got to know our fellow club members during bowling, rock-climbing, swimming, and ice-skating trips- not to mention near-weekly boba excursions after practice. It was a great time building our community and making friends and we’re excited for even more bonding activities next year! 

  Starting in April we began getting ready for our 2022 spring showcase. Every member of our club worked hard and contributed to the successful execution of our Avatar-themed Spring Concert, Avatar: the Last Airdrummer! On May 1st we performed for an audience of almost 300 people in Kane hall. This was the first live spring concert for all but 2 of our members and from soloing to playing percussion to performing some very funny skits, we had an amazing time making this one of our most enjoyable performances of the year! We were also very grateful for the support of our stage manager, Kelsey Kua, and all our volunteers who made the performance possible. May was a very eventful month for Taiko Kai– following our spring concert we performed at UW’s Japanese Student Association’s Matsuri. We also participated in the ECC’s CCCI walk, performed at the ECC Gala and the U-District street fair.  

Taiko Kai 2022 Spring Showcase: Avatar: the Last AirdrummerLeft to Right: Souma Yabuki, Alina Butler, Owen Tanaka, Anna Yates, Daniel Liu
UW's Japanese Student Association Matsuri PerformanceFront: Owen Tanaka, Back: Daniel Liu
Samuel E Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center Gala Performance Left: Lily Lockwood, Right: Noa Roth

We’d like to thank our friends and family, our Taiko Kai alumni, and everyone that came to support us at our performances. We’re also thankful to our 2021-22 officer team: Owen, Alina, Souma, Jon, Anna, Noa, Kie, and Jason for all their hard work this year. We are especially grateful to the Butler family for all their time and help with moving equipment and making our practices possible. 

2023 marks the 10 year anniversary of Taiko Kai’s creation in 2013 by the Matsudaira sisters. We're proud of the 10 years our club has been going strong, creating a space in which we can practice and perform taiko and promote Japanese culture. We are excited to contribute to the continuation of Taiko kai and hope to uphold the supportive and friendly environment we all love as we welcome our 10th generation of members!


Interested in becoming part of our community? Join our discord! https://discord.gg/t6m9JSg3px

SPRING CONCERT 2022

Full concert video: OUT NOW!

2021 Newsletter


As the summer comes to a close, we would like to highlight our accomplishments as a club over this past year. We held our first live performance in over a year at the Edmonds Uptown Evening Market! One of the core values of performing taiko is engaging the audience, and we are working with new generations of Taiko Kai to maintain that value.


During fall 2020, as a performance club that feeds off face-to-face interactions to learn, it was difficult to host fall workshops but it came with much success! Bonding with new members became an important part of Taiko Kai: making bucket drums together to practice with, online practices and game nights.


In winter and spring of 2021, King County moved into phase 3 along with vaccine rollouts. This allowed Taiko Kai to begin in-person practices. Taiko Kai had its first online performances: FIUTS CulturalFest, our Virtual Showcase, Spring Showcase and the U District Light Rail Opening Festival! Moving forward, we will be continuing to have in-person practices and prepare for upcoming performances. We would like to thank our friends and families that made doing what we love, playing taiko and having a good time, a reality.


Interested in becoming part of our community? Join our discord!