Koh Yamakawa is a Taiko artist, composer, and educator based in Berkeley, CA.  Alongside performing around the SF Bay Area and exploring new avenues of creative expression through Taiko, he is the head Taiko instructor at the Berkeley Buddhist Temple and founder of Club Hachijo, an Oakland-based group practicing the traditional style of drumming found on the island of Hachijo, Japan.

Berkeley Buddhist Temple (BBT) Taiko is a weekly class based at the Berkeley Buddhist Temple teaching students the Japanese performance art of drumming called Taiko.  Starting as a small 4-person class in 2021 by Koh Yamakawa, BBT Taiko consists of members of the community came together after the COVID-19 pandemic to play drums together.  Now with over 20 active members, BBT Taiko offers both beginner and intermediate classes, taught by Koh Yamakawa and Trisha Mah.

BBT Taiko is an affiliate group of Berkeley Buddhist Temple.

The Northern California Gagaku Group (NCGG) has its roots in the gagaku classes taught at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, in the early 1980's by the Master Iimperial Court musician, Suenobu Togi.  The current group was formed at the Berkeley Buddhist Temple in 2009 to practice, teach, and keep alive the 1000 year old musical traditions of gagaku.  The group members include Bay Area musicians, formers students of Suenobu Togi, and former members of the LA-based Kinnara Gagaku group.

Erika Oba

Erika Oba is a composer, pianist/flutist, and educator based in the SF Bay Area. As a composer she has written works for jazz ensembles, chamber groups, orchestra, dance, and theater. She is active as a performer on both piano and flute, and has performed in a wide variety of ensembles with musicians including Meredith Monk, Peter Apfelbaum, Hitomi Oba, Lisa Mezzacappa, Jean Fineberg, Jon Jang, and Francis Wong. As an artist, she is interested in exploring cultural practice in diaspora, performance as ritual, and music as a vehicle for exploring our relationships to our communities, histories, and biosphere.