LIHU‘E – The young people from the oldest city in Japan came across the ocean, and for three days their efforts benefited the Kaua‘i All- Island Marching Band (KAIMB), whose members have aspirations to participate in the 2005 Tournament of
LIHU‘E – The young people from the oldest city in Japan came across the ocean, and for three days their efforts benefited the Kaua‘i All- Island Marching Band (KAIMB), whose members have aspirations to participate in the 2005 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif.
Momo Sakai and her friends, Kaori Otaka, and Miho Ohasi, exploded with glee earlier this week as Sakai’s host family Dean and Lei Nakayama offered up a box of malasadas for the trio to enjoy following their performance on the mall.
The trio are part of the Kyoto Tachibana High School Brass & Marching Band that offered up a night concert at the Lihu‘e Kauai War Memorial Convention Hall that was a KAIMB fund-raiser, and a free preview of the show on the mall the day before.
One of the top high school bands in the Kansai region that consists of Osaka and Western Japan, the 91-member band announced their high-energy arrival with the crisp notes from their brass section punctuated by equally crisp drumbeats, stopping shoppers who picked up on the familiar Disney offering, “It’s a Small World.” Like the fabled Pied Piper, the shoppers congregated at the food court area where other shoppers had collected anxiously awaiting the arrival of the band that has won numerous awards for their precision marching and highly charged music.
Invited to perform for the 1996 World Olympics in Atlanta, Ga., the band this year is headed by director Hiroyuki Tanaka, and made up of 87 girls and four boys who strutted in wearing uniform hapi coats and crisp pleated skirts.
The group arrived on Kaua‘i last weekend, and were met by local coordinator Art Umezu, Robert Kawamura, incoming Kaua‘i High School Band Booster president, and a host of high school students at Smith’s Tropical Paradise, where they enjoyed a Po’s Kitchen box lunch before boarding the Smith’s barge for a Fern Grotto tour. Umezu served as the host for the evening concert that generated $4,000, with Tachibana music director Tanaka presenting Carol Kimura, president of both KAIMB and (for now) the Kaua‘i High School Band Boosters, with a check for an additional $2,000 during the formal exchange program at the convention hall.
The less-than-sold-out convention hall was thrilled with the two-part show presented by the visiting Kyoto musicians, and when Kaua‘i band director Larry McIntosh took the baton to lead “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” the auditorium burst into applause.
Each of the numbers presented by the Tachibana band was introduced by a student speaker who worked from notes, and members of the audience were treated to musical pieces that earned the Japanese high school band some of its accolades, one being “Dancing in the Wind — Kage No Mai,” and “Miss Saigon — A Symphonic Portrait,” both pieces being part of the band’s repertoire aiding their first-place finish in a brass-band competition and concert held recently in Japan.
Demonstrating their international abilities, band members easily moved into “Cola Latino!! – Night in Tunisia, Amapola, Granada,” a piece the band will be performing for a competition they’ll participate in next month.
“Hooray for Hollywood,” and a medley, “Swing! Swing! Swing! — Take the ‘A’ Train, Moonlight Serenade, Bugle Call Rag, Sing, Sing, Sing,” both generated standing ovations, leading up to “Furusato,” where members of the band switched from musicians to singers, with the finale being highlighted with a solo performance from one of the band’s advisors.
People were also to the military precision and crispness of the band in total when they changed costumes and positions between numbers.
The rousing second half saw the musicians transformed from their white blouses/blue skirts with white knee-highs to a bright orange and yellow marching outfit that matched the high-energy performance that again raised the audience to its feet in standing ovation.
The visitors responded to calls for “hana hou,” performing three encore numbers.
Tanaka is no stranger to Kaua‘i, Umezu explained. He came with the Tachibana High School Brass & Marching Band seven years ago as a co-director. Upon the director’s retirement, Tanaka took over as director, and two years ago Tanaka returned to Kaua‘i where he was married at the Fern Grotto.
