New Updates:

New class schedule will be available soon!
If you are interested in booking us for performances and school show/workshops, please contact info@taikonyc.com!

KAORU WATANABE TAIKO CENTER preserves, teaches, and promotes various styles of Japanese contemporary and traditional music, with a focus on the shinobue bamboo flutes and Japanese percussion, including the taiko drum. Part of this mission includes fostering a community of practitioners, scholars and admirers of Japanese performing arts.

ABOUT KAORU WATANABE

Composer and musician Kaoru Watanabe grounds his performance in traditional Japanese music while inhabiting a startling combination of musical worlds. He is renowned for his ability to collaborate with a diverse array of visionary international artists: Jason Moran, Yo-Yo Ma and Silkroad, Spanish flamenco dancer Eva Yerbabuena, visual artists Simone Leigh and Alyson Shotz, calligrapher Koji Kakinuma, Japanese National Living Treasure Bando Tamasaburo, vocalists Alicia Hall Moran and Imani Uzuri, tap dancers Tamango and Kazunori Kumagai, Galician bagpiper Carlos Nuñez, So Percussion, Semba Kiyohiko, Reigakusha, Brooklyn Raga Massive, Adam Rudolph and Go:Organic Orchestra, the Aizuri and Parker String Quartets and pipa virtuoso Wu Man. In 2018, Watanabe debuted as an orchestral soloist and composer with the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House. He is an advisor, composer and featured musician on the Oscar-nominated score of Wes Anderson’s film Isle of Dogs and was a guest artist on the Silkroad's Grammy Award-winning album Sing Me Home.

Born to Japanese parents who were both members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Watanabe started playing Western Classical music at an early age, then graduated from the Manhattan School of Music as a jazz flute and saxophonist, followed by a decade in Japan performing with and eventually directing the internationally acclaimed Taiko Performing Arts Ensemble Kodo. Watanabe returned to New York City to continue developing his ever-evolving musical voice, specializing on transverse bamboo flutes such as the shinobue, noh kan and ryuteki and various Japanese percussion. Watanabe has performed his compositions at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Boston Symphony Hall, The Kennedy Center, and Kabukiza and in all 47 prefectures in Japan. Watanabe continues to perform regularly across the North, Central and South Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. As a passionate educator, Watanabe has taught at such prestigious institutions as Princeton and Wesleyan University and the Tanglewood Music Festival.

As a passionate educator, Kaoru has taught courses at Princeton University, Wesleyan University, Colby and Dickinson Colleges and has been a faculty member at Tanglewood Music Festival and the Silk Road Project's Global Musician Workshop at DePauw University. Kaoru is an instructor for kaDON, an online Japanese flute and percussion resource presented by preeminent taiko maker Miyamoto Unosuke Shoten of Tokyo. 

Watanabe graciously receives the support of the preeminent taiko maker Miyamoto Unosuke Shoten of Tokyo and master shinobue flute maker Ranjo of Chiba Prefecture.