(CO-DIRECTOR)
Musician and musicologist, David visited Japan in 1977 as an exchange student and entered the tutelage of shakuhachi master Junsuke Kawase III (Junsuke I). He received his MA in musicology from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1985. Since 1982, David has been performing, teaching, lecturing and writing about shakuhachi and Japanese music both in Japan and around the world. He has made numerous performance appearances on Japanese television and radio. While he specializes in the classical traditions of the Sankyoku ensemble and Kinko-ryu Honkyoku, his performance activities cover the full range of music today; everything from Japanese to Western, from classical to avant-garde. Wheeler was a visiting Japanese music lecturer and shakuhachi instructor at the College of Music at the University of Colorado (where he co-organized and prepared the World Shakuhachi Festival 1998 at CU Boulder) and he also lectures and instructs students at Naropa University. In 2008, he received the performance name Kansuke II. He lives in Boulder, Colorado. He actively teaches, performs, and gives lectures, around the US, in Japan, and elsewhere.

www.kansuke2.com

The 2023 recipient of the "Excellence Award for Music" in the Japanese National Agency for Cultural Affairs Arts Festival, Yodo Kurahashi started studying shakuhachi as a child, with his father Yodo Kurahashi I, the first director of Muju-An shakuhachi school in Kyoto. Later he studied with Homei Matsumura, the renowned Kinko-style shakuhachi player in Nara, Japan. He gave his first recital in 1976 for which he received the Osaka Cultural Award. In 1980 he became the second director of the Muju-An school. He has toured extensively since 1981, giving performances in the US, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, China, and Israel.

Kurahashi is the director of the Kyoto Hogaku group and the Kyoto Sankyoku Association. Since 1995 he has been teaching intensive annual classes in shakuhachi in Boston, New York, and Boulder. He also single-handedly put on World Shakuhachi Festival 2012 in Kyoto, and of course, the Shakuhachi Camp was held in Kyoto that summer.

Born in Texas in 1951, Riley Lee began studying shakuhachi in Japan in 1971. In 1980, he became the first non-Japanese dai shihan (‘great teacher’). He was also the first non-Japanese to play wadaiko (Japanese drums) professionally (from 1974) as a founding member of Ondekoza (now Kodo).

Riley moved from Honolulu, Hawaii to Sydney in 1986 with his wife Patricia and their twin daughters. Riley has a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Sydney University. He has 60+ commercial recordings; his first (1980) is still available on Smithsonian-Folkways. Riley co-founded the Australian Shakuhachi Society with Patricia in 1996. Ian Cleworth and Riley also co-founded Sydney-based TaikOz in 1997.

He was the Executive Director, Artistic Director, and a major sponsor of the World Shakuhachi Festival 2008, which was held in Sydney. This highly acclaimed international event was organized primarily by some of the faculty of the Shakuhachi Summer Camp of the Rockies. That year, Shakuhachi Camp was held in Sydney and was called “Shakuhachi Summer Camp of the Rockies Down Under.”

Riley has often said that his favorite event on his busy touring schedule has always been our summer camp. He looks forward to seeing you in 2023.

rileylee.com

Kaoru Kakizakai is an internationally renowned player and teacher of the shakuhachi. Kakizakai studied under and recorded with Yokoyama Katsuya. He graduated from the NHK Traditional Music Conservatory and is a past winner of the Kumamoto All Japan Hougaku competition. Kakizakai has performed widely in Japan and abroad, notably as a shakuhachi soloist in Toru Takemitsu's November Steps with the NHK Symphony Orchestra. As of 2006, he is a research fellow at the Tokyo College of Music. He is also a full-time instructor for the International Shakuhachi Kenshukan and NHK Culture Centre, and President of the International Shakuhachi Kenshu-kan Chichibu School and Oizumigakuen School. He is a member of the regular faculty of the Shakuhachi Summer Camp of the Rockies in Colorado, where his deep dives into how to make a better sound are always a highlight of the Camp experience.

www.kakizakai.com

Christopher Yohmei Blasdel began the shakuhachi and studies of Japanese music in 1972 with Living National Treasure Goro Yamaguchi. In 1982 he received an MFA in ethnomusicology from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and was accredited as a shihan shakuhachi master by Yamaguchi. In his musical activities, Christopher balances traditional shakuhachi music, modern compositions, improvisation, and cross-genre work with musicians, dancers, poets, and visual artists. He performs around the world and has guest lectured at such institutions as Earlham College, Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok), Texas A&M University, University of Washington, Charles University (Prague), Cal Arts, International Christian University (Tokyo), University of Maryland, and Temple University. Christopher has composed and performed music for NHK documentaries and various films and was the Artistic Director of the International House of Japan from 1987 to 2013. He co-organized the Boulder World Shakuhachi Festival ’98 and assisted at the Sydney World Shakuhachi Festival in 2008. Christopher also co-founded the annual Prague Shakuhachi Festival. His semi-autobiographical book, The Single Tone—A Personal Journey through Shakuhachi Music (Printed Matter Press, 2005) and The Shakuhachi, A Manual for Learning (1988) are two of the most important English language resource books on the shakuhachi. Christopher presently lectures at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and holds a fifth-degree black belt in Aikido.

www.yohmei.com

Yoko Reikano Kimura (koto, shamisen and voice) based in New York and Japan, has concertized in over 20 countries around the world. Kimura has performed at prestigious venues such as the Warsaw Autumn Festival, Israel Festival, The University of Cambridge, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston Symphony Hall, Japan Society, and throughout Japan including Kabuki-za and World Heritage Sites. Her awards include the First prize at the prestigious 10th Kenjun Memorial National Koto Competition, the Kyoto Aoyama Barocksaal Award, and a scholarship from the Agency of Cultural Affairs of Japan. Kimura is a founder of Duo YUMENO, with cellist Hikaru Tamaki.

Kimura has studied with Kono Kameyama, who is considered the preeminent pupil of legendary koto and shamisen performers, Kin’ichi Nakanoshima, Senko Yamabiko (Living National Treasure), and Akiko Nishigata. As a Japanese koto specialist, Kimura recently served as a consultant for Carnegie Hall’s educational program.

yokoreikanokimura.com

(FOUNDER + CO-DIRECTOR)
I am not a professional shakuhachi player; I am an amateur enthusiast. I first heard the shakuhachi from a recording of Katsuya Yokoyama playing honkyoku in the early 1970s. For me, the quintessential sound of the shakuhachi is still embodied in his playing to this day. I had the opportunity to travel to Japan in the early 80s and met Yokoyama for the first time on that trip. Then in 1994, Yokoyama sensei hosted the inaugural World Shakuhachi Festival in Bisei, Japan which I had the privilege to attend., That fateful trip to Bisei opened me up to the larger world of the shakuhachi, meeting for the first time many amazing players, some of whom have subsequently become my teachers and friends. That first World Shakuhachi Festival was so inspiring that at the end of the festival, I suggested a follow-up 2nd World Shakuhachi Festival be hosted outside of Japan in Boulder Colorado. This idea was warmly received with lots of sake and “Kampai”.

Over the next four years David Kansuke Wheeler, Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, and Kaoru Kakizakai (all of whom I first met at Bisei) collaborated with me to make the 2nd World Shakuhachi Festival in Boulder a reality and ultimately a huge success. In the afterglow of that rich cultural and musical event, I decided to create a way for top-quality shakuhachi teachers to return to Colorado more regularly in a smaller capacity. The setting of a music summer camp seemed ideal. And so, working closely with my camp co-director and faculty member David Kansuke Wheeler, Shakuhachi Summer Camp of the Rockies was created. The first one was held in 1999, the year following the Boulder World Shakuhachi Festival, and it has been going strong as an annual event since then. I’m excited to welcome everyone to our 25th camp this year, which we plan to make our final Shakuhachi Summer Camp of the Rockies. So, come join us for one final time, or perhaps your first time, and blow some bamboo here in beautiful Colorado with an amazing faculty and an enthusiastic community of other shakuhachi payers.