"Tradition as a Basis for Innovation" - Kenny Endo

Kenny Endo is one of the leading personas in contemporary percussion and rhythm. He is the vanguard of the taiko genre, continuing to pave new paths in this Japanese style drumming after over thirty years as a career taiko player. A performer, composer, and teacher of taiko with numerous awards and accolades, Kenny Endo is a phenomenon unto himself, blending Japanese taiko with rhythms influenced from around the world into original melodies and improvisation.

Originally trained as a jazz musician in the Asian cultural renaissance of 1970s California, Endo began his taiko career first with L.A.'s Kinnara Taiko, and then with the renowned San Francisco Taiko Dojo, one of the first and still greatest American kumi daiko groups. In 1980, he embarked on a decade-long odyssey in his ancestral Japan, studying and performing with the masters of ancient classical drumming, traditional Tokyo festival music, and ensemble drumming. Endo has the honor of being the first non-Japanese national to have received a natori (stage name and masters degree) in hogaku hayashi (stage drumming). In the hogaku world, Endo is known as Mochizuki Tajiro.

In the greater musical world, "Kenny Endo" has become synonymous with "taiko." He is arguably one of the most talented musicians in the genre, crossing easily between the classical Japanese style and his own neoclassical, globally-inspired variety. Among his many distinctions are an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, an artist residency at the Lincoln Center Institute in New York, and his own "Kenny Endo Day" proclaimed by the mayor of Honolulu. He has recorded five CDs of original taiko compositions, performed for The Who, Bobby McFerrin, and Michael Jackson, and is featured on the soundtracks for Kayo Hatta's film "Picture Bride" and Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now."

Endo's taiko skills have taken him to the Microsoft Global Meeting in Atlanta, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris, and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. He has performed with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Honolulu Symphony, and the Tokyo Symphony, traveling across Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, and North and South America in his effort to share taiko with the world. Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Honolulu each maintain a Kenny Endo Taiko Ensemble, boasting some of the finest young taiko musicians in the genre.

In 1994, Kenny and Chizuko Endo founded the Taiko Center of the Pacific in Honolulu, a school of taiko with over one hundred students and a wildly successful ensemble drumming group. Despite his rigorous schedule of tours, performances, and recording, Endo still teaches weekly taiko classes to students of all skill levels, sharing his vast repository of taiko knowledge with the next generation of taiko masters and enthusiasts. He can be found gracing the halls of the most prestigious universities and performance centers around the world, as well as the humblest gymnasiums in the public schools and community centers of Hawaii.