| View individual bios by clicking on the images below |
ABOUT THE PANACHE ORCHESTRA
|
Tokyo, 1998:
It all began with a strange dream....
|
Brenda
K was dreaming: She was trapped in a room on a sinking aircraft
carrier. The door out was built like a manhole and she managed to
squeeze through it, but the heavy lid came down and trapped her violin
case. She was tugging on it and crying in frustration, but couldn’t free
her instrument. She told her boyfriend of the dream the next day. “It
could be interpreted only one way”, Chi said, ignoring the obvious
references decrying the military-industrial complex: This dream meant
her music was trapped. It must be let out. “We must play together as a
band”. Out of this, and real-life experience, was born The Panache
Orchestra. Two different musicians, two different people from two very
different countries and four cats, seeking to bridge the gap between
classical and pop/rock without falling into the precipitous gorge below.
“Neither
of us have any idea how we thought we could make it work,” Brenda K
confesses, reminiscing through the many years of frustration from their
own epic communication failures to the incompatibility of the music they
were creating with the demands of the music industry. “Up until three
years ago, we had heretofore been focusing on work as side players with
other professional bands and ensembles, and I never saw a logical
insertion point for the music we were making as The Panache Orchestra.”
It took a while for the two to understand that their radical
differences might make for a marketable, if volatile chemistry. The
Panache Orchestra suggests turning off your cell phones and your
useless genres. If you must have labels, perhaps Brenda K’s classical
violin and Chi Saito’s rhythm-driven acoustic guitar and dramatic
instrumental compositions are “Rattling the Chamber-Music Cage.” Or
“Anime Beatnik Combo.” Another label might be simply “Beautiful.” Woven
into TPO's DNA are strands of The Beatles, Django Reinhardt and
Stephane Grappelli , Mahavishnu Orchestra, and traditional music of
Europe and Japan shaken up with a shot of vintage rock ‘n roll, and as
the night grows longer and the cocktails accumulate, a dynamic,
swashbuckling romanticism emerges. Brenda
K once tried to walk what she calls, “the normal career path for a
classical player”. A protracted academic life at San Diego State
University was followed by playing weddings, musical theatre gigs and on
other musicians’ recordings, edging hopefully toward a seat in an
orchestra. When nothing materialized, she gave up music and flew away to
Japan, where her other degrees in business and the Japanese language
might be of use. It was in Tokyo on a New Year’s Eve weekend that she
awaked in her apartment “at the crack of noon” and discovered a paper
chop stick wrapper from the saké-drenched previous evening at a sushi
bar. On it was written a train-station name, a phone number and the
name: “Chi Saito”. Oh, yes, Brenda K recalled. The cute water boy from
the restaurant.Meanwhile,
Chi “Mr. Groove” Saito was another disillusioned musician who has very
little formal musical training and likens his musical education to
“eating out of the garbage bin of a world class hotel”, having learned
on the job while living the rock and roll lifestyle playing cabarets and
nightclubs, and later taught, composed TV soundtracks and backed major
touring acts at arena shows all over Japan before walking away,
intending to focus on his own writing, dreaming of the day when he would
form his own band to perform and record the vast amount of music he had
composed during his long career as a professional player. He was
helping out a friend at the sushi bar the night he spotted Brenda K.
They married in 2003, moved to Brenda’s hometown of San Diego the
following year, and in 2006 fled to Los Angeles as “economic refugees.” They’ve
worked through the inherent incompatibility of classical and rock,
navigating hostile terrain full of land mines such as endless language
and cultural misunderstandings due to their personal as well as musical
backgrounds. Brenda says that grasping Chi’s lessons in pop and rock
rhythms and how to work that into her classical programming “has led to
much psychic bloodshed”, adding that “I’m hardwired to expect
everything written out. And not a pop chart, but a score. That does not
fit the outline of his musical milieu.” Yet Brenda has embraced the
world of non-conformity. Their brand of Insurgent Melody is perhaps
reflected in one characteristic that Brenda K and Chi do share: a rebel,
anti-authority streak, and a common lack of interest in creating music
that mimics established styles and conventions. Their
musical dream, and the message conveyed by the sinking aircraft
carrier, was realized with The Panache Orchestra’s U.S. launch in 2008.
Chi would sometimes consult a medium who had set up shop at a chicken
restaurant down the street from their Tokyo apartment, and brought along
Brenda K on one visit. “She told us, ‘The karma of this relationship
is so strong,” Brenda K says, “you cannot break it, no matter what.’”
In late 2011 The
Panache Orchestra expanded their line-up and sound, adding
Philippine- American drummer Michael Agorrilla, whose talent was
recognized early on and put to good use by producers and artists on major labels as he built
his career as a freelance drummer and session player. His
contribution adds a distinct colour to the transnational Panache
palette, as all three members hail from different points of the Pacific
Basin.
|
Watch The Panache Orchestra's demo video
|
 |
| TPO Demo Video - main |
|
|
|
|
 |
| When and Why hire TPO? |
|
|
 |
| Where and how to hire TPO |
|
|
|
|
