First of all, thank you for your amazing support!

Thanks to a successful kickstarter campaign, and funding from the East Bay Fund for Artists and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Bodhidharma Ensemble (BE) will premiere at Oakland Asian Cultural Center on May 4, 2013. We are honored to have received both the generosity from listeners as well as acknowledged by these eminent funding organizations.

Here is a quick intro to what the project is about from our Kickstarter page.

Working on this project continues to be an inspiring journey, taking this music in a very different but somehow completely natural direction. BE combines South Indian and Chinese classical music with saxophone, guqin and mridangam through original and traditional compositions. The cultural, musical and spiritual ethos around this project is immense and profound. To share a few glimpses of this, there will be posts about these various aspects on this blog and on OACC’s website leading up to the performance. Please check back here often to find out more.

Bodhidharma is known as an enlightened master. His reputation is both legendary and mysterious, with most accounts of him being anecdotal and some falling into tall-tale territory. However, contemplation on Bodhidharma, on what he represents and to where his teachings point reveals a vast, unknowable space. We hope to find inspiration for this new music from those depths and see what is revealed.