muzycy:
Francis Wong - soprano saxophone
Jim Norton - bass clarinet
Wayne Wallace - trombone
Chizuru Kineya - shamisen
Tatsu Aoki - shamisen, bass
Yangqin Zhao - yangqin
Melody Takata - taiko
Deszon X. Claiborne - trapset drums

About the Ensemble
This collection of works represents my second effort to realize compositions for slightly larger ensembles. The first was the 2006 recording Legends and Legacies.
For Miyoshi Sketches I gathered several of my long term colleagues and mentors in Bay Area ensembles, Jim Norton, Melecio Magdaluyo, Wayne Wallace, Deszon X. Claiborne, and Scott Sorkin.
I performed with these musicians in ensembles such as the Tentet led by Jim and John Worley Jr., Anthony Brown’s various groups, and of course Jon Jang’s bands, all over the past 30 years plus that I have been active.
Added to the group is my long term collaborator of 23 years Tatsu Aoki and more recent collaborators taiko sensei Melody Takata (since 2000), yangqin master Yangqin Zhao (since 1995), and shamisen grandmaster from Tokyo Chizuru Kineya (since 2013).
I want to give a special thanks to Jim Norton, who has inspired me over the years to keep writing, who arranged Year of the Monkey and The Dream. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to realize a project that brings together my artistic history in this way.

About the Works
“Miyoshi Sketches”, commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission, pays tribute to the late Tomio John Miyoshi. “Uncle” John was a frequent visitor to our home as I was growing up.
He had become a close friend of my parents in their early days immigrating to the US as members of St. Dominic’s Catholic Church at Steiner and Bush in San Francisco very close to Japantown - our first apartment in the US was on Webster St.
Through him, my parents had overcome their feelings about Japanese people from the war, particularly because of Miyoshi’s experience as a Japanese American who had been incarcerated in World War II prison camps and who subsequently served in the US Army.
Uncle John had been a member of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) assigned t.......
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