Updates from this Month

Thank you to the Currents team!

The past couple months have been a whirlwind and a lot has happened, so I believe some catch up is in order!

Earlier this month, we presented a new iteration of Currents! Thanks to a generous award from the City of Bothell Arts Commission and a wonderful partnership with McMenamins History, AC Petersen and I were able to expand this piece out with two big new numbers and a new cast.

We were glad to welcome on Helen Marion-Rowe, Cassidy Cheong, Sandra Waters, and Van Lang Pham into our cast. Additional thanks to Sam Peters for accompanying and assistant music directing, Marilyn Gonzalez for stage managing, and K.D. Schill for costume coordination. And we are very grateful to the full audience who came out to support the work!

We had the unique opportunity to host a panel discussion after the performance, hosted by Gail M. Nomura. This panel included a conversation with Shigeru Nishida (who was 12 years old when his family was incarcerated at Heart Mountain during Japanese internment), as well as other community leaders preserving our history and seeking to protect the rights and civil liberties of all Americans in the present day.

Coming up on the horizon:

June will be a busy month!

On June 2nd, I'll be presenting pieces in Gaisma Theatre Group's fundraiser! "Help Us Grow" will be an evening of original works by various local writers, all to help Gaisma's aim to foster new work in the Pacific Northwest.

And the Seattle Opera Creation Lab will be performing June 13th and 15th! Me and Grace Ward have put a lot of work into our opera, Caccini's Ghost, and we're nearing the final stretch. We can't wait to show you what we've been working on, so we'll look forward to seeing you there!

"The Thread"

Gaisma Theatre Group

Welcome back for one last demo from Buried Deep. (But don't worry, I'll still be working on it more in the background!)

I wanted to give thanks again to the wonderful team at Gaisma Theatre Group for coordinating this project and for getting so many great folks together to make these demos a reality! Further, thank you to Justin Tran for music directing these pieces and Daniel Wolfert for bringing all his music producing expertise. These recordings were a team effort and it would not have been possible without them.

Lastly, many thanks to the singers for lending their voices to my music: Sandra Waters, Arika Matoba, and Josh Kenji. In a fitting end to this process, all three of them return to sing our final demo, "The Thread."

When our story begins, Ruri has been suffering the same, troubled dream for years. She dreams of generations of ancestors stretching out before her across a vast ocean. They all warn Ruri of dangers in the waking world; dangers that, they claim, she can only face with her family by her side.

Follow Gaisma on Instagram to catch their next project, and follow me on Youtube and Soundcloud for more of my music. Also keep tabs here and on my own Instagram. We're barely a month into 2025 and trust me, there's plenty more to come.

"In the After"

Gaisma Theatre Group

Welcome back for my third Buried Deep demo with Gaisma, with only one more week of releases after today!

After a short feature in last week's song, we're bringing back Arika Matoba to sing "In the After."

Left to her own devices, Ruri seeks to understand her family better and looks to her grandfather, her Jichan, for guidance. During WWII, Her Jichan was ripped away from his home for being Japanese-American, spent his young adult years in an interment camp, and dropped off the radar once the war was over. All Ruri has are artifacts of his life from before internment and the hope that they can provide meaning to her life now.

Follow me on Youtube or Soundcloud for more and to catch up on previous weeks, and check out Gaisma's Instagram for additional updates!