"Prologue" Concert Announcement!

Hello loyal readers!

It’s been a while since we’ve updated this blog, so for those of you who have been faithfully checking this page for updates for the past year, thank you, (and our sincerest apologies).

We do have some exciting news, however! We’ve been hard at work preparing for our first concert showcase, “Prologue.” We are thrilled to announce that the show has sold out—thank you to everyone who has purchased a ticket! We’re excited to show you all what we’ve been working on. https://alvasshowroom.com/event/prota/

Prota has meant many different things to many different people at many different times. Progressive Taiko. Prolific Taiko. Professional Taiko. Procrastination Taiko. For me, Prota always meant “Probably Taiko,” because whenever someone asks me what I am doing Friday night, my answer has always been “Probably Taiko.” In much the same way, our members all have a slightly different conceptualization of our upcoming concert, but I’d like to take this opportunity to share mine.

I have always believed that Prota's greatest strength is the musicality of its membership. By virtue of recruiting performers forged in the crucible of collegiate taiko with a thirst for artistic experimentation, Prota has enjoyed a relatively high level of performance. Many of our members have performed (and currently perform) taiko with other community and professional groups, so we’ve enjoyed a strong diversity of musical backgrounds and taiko influences to draw upon in conducting our experimentation and performances.

Our greatest strength is also the source of what I perceive to be the weakness of Prota - as a self-proclaimed ragtag taiko ensemble comprised of players with mismatched musical backgrounds united under an unabashedly ambiguous name, Prota often struggles with fostering artistic and ideological unity.

This concert seeks to change that by challenging ourselves to step out of the creative sandbox and onto the stage in a coordinated production that exhibits the talents of our songwriters and performers. We have a lot of exciting new pieces (and twists on some old favorites) that we’ll be unveiling for the first time, and we are positively stoked to be able to showcase them on the Alvas Showroom performance stage.

We hope that this concert is a prologue to the Prota to come… and we appreciate your patience and support in getting us there.

-Michael