Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission Meeting, February 12, 2018

All right, let's let's uh get started today, and I want to call to order our um uh February twelfth, two thousand eighteen meeting of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission.

Uh thank you all for joining us today.

Um we've got uh a few people in the audience here that uh and we are also we are live now, are we not?

Yay.

Okay, I think this is my first time.

And actually the last I want to thank uh my uh vice chair Steve Winlock for chairing the meeting last month uh in my absence.

That was uh uh are we expecting uh Steven today?

Okay, no, that's right, he's out.

So uh if we can do roll call, Leslie.

Donnie, uh Commissioner Blumenstock, Commissioner Silva.

Uh here.

Commissioner.

Commissioner Mertz.

Commissioner Wallace.

Commissioner Marion, Commissioner Garrison.

Here, Commissioner Sabone.

Here.

Commissioner Winlock.

Commissioner Ishmael.

Here.

And do we have a quorum?

We have a quorum.

Wonderful, thank you.

And so to kick off our uh wonderful Monday here, we have a special presentation.

Uh Christy Oshiro, uh, who is the founder and artistic director for the Subaki Ensemble uh is here to give us a uh uh a brief presentation, and let me give you a um uh a lead-in to her.

Uh Christy Oshiro is a professional taiko uh artist based in Sacramento and San Francisco Bay Area.

She started playing Taiko at age nine in Kona, Hawaii for the Kona Daifukugi uh Taiko, uh Kuji, sorry, Daifukuji Taiko, uh, and was an instructor and touring ensemble member for the Portland Taiko from 2001 to 2007 while getting her bachelor's degree in music performance in percussion at Portland State University.

She's also an inst an instructor and youth programs director at Sacramento Taychodon from 2007 to 2014.

Christy is currently the artistic director of the Subaki Ensemble, creative director of Placer Ume Taiko, instructor for San Mateo Buddhist Temple Taiko, a touring member of Tycoza, and has performed and given Taiko workshops across the US and in Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Australia, and New Zealand.

She's also a vendor of Visions in Education in Sacramento and specializes in educational ensembles and teaching youth.

So Christy, welcome.

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank all the commissioners for inviting me to speak today.

I wanted to touch on my experience with the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission and how uh the organization has affected and helped me as an artist.

While I was studying for my music degree in Portland, um being a professionally involved with a Tyco group there called Portland Tyco.

Um I was with them as their as their budget surpassed the 500,000 uh dollar mark and was really involved and learned a lot with them about how uh they performed and organized their organization and uh presented school programs to youth, which is what I do a lot with now in the any given child program with SMAC.

Um since moving to Sacramento in 2007, I first became involved with uh Sacramento Tyco Dunn, the big taycho group here.

Um at the time, Sacramento Taiko Dunn was heavily funded by SMAC grants, and so I was very familiar with with this organization and how it supported the arts in the Sacramento community.

Uh we also, when the any given child arts program started providing free arts assembly programs to the um neighboring school districts, I I became involved with that at the time, it was headed by Erica Kraft and um uh Ray Nani, um who are excellent, and uh they were really great with um helping to provide the artists that participated in that assembly program with supplemental materials like the partnership with the Kennedy Arts Center, uh bringing in professionals uh who had experience provide constructing these types of programs for youth, and to help those of us who are providing these programs for youth uh youth in Sacramento to help us kind of enrich our programs, make them better, more flexible, and help with our creative process, which I thought was really amazing, and those workshops were completely free, and I I just um really appreciated having that kind of support from uh from the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission.

And also after leaving Sacramento Taycho Dan and forming you know my own small ensemble that then we created a new program to um present to schools the those workshops that I had participated in with the folks from the Kennedy Center really helped me in kind of branching out on my own to become a freelance performing artists, both here in Sacramento and in the larger San Francisco Bay Area.

And so what was what's really great about the any given child program is also I wanted to note that when the uh when Erica Kraft and Ray Nani left and then Laura and Rachel and Heather and Leslie uh stepped in, the transition was really seamless, and they were all continue to be very supportive of us artists, and I thought that was really great.

And what the Any Given Child Program does for Sacramento, specifically from an artist perspective, is that in San Francisco Bay Area and in other parts of the country, there's a young audiences program.

If you're not familiar with that, they they helped artists uh book assembly programs in various schools in their in their neighborhoods.

Um but that program is very costly and it's limiting creatively because your program has to be exactly the same every single time you perform it.

Um but it's great in that it does provide lots of performing opportunities for those arts organizations.

However, that program does not exist in the Sacramento in the Sacramento area.

And um and so the Eddie Given Child program has been like a great um alternative, I think, to the Young Audiences program.

Um in closing, I'd like to again thank everyone for having me here to uh share my experiences with you.

I'll take questions if you have any, but I also wanted to thank you all again just for the work that you do in providing the just the city of Sacramento for higher quality arts in in general, because what uh the funding that you provide and the programs and and things that that um you provide for the city help to um create more opportunities for more freelance artists to become full-time professional artists, creating thus creating higher quality art and a better arts environment for everyone in the community.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Christy.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, you're uh it's uh an amazing example of where the uh the channel of our funding is able to benefit uh uh you know existing groups that have been established and or have grown through this all the way to new and to grow from there.

So other commissioners have uh uh comments or or questions for Christy?

David?

I do.

I'm just curious what's next for you.

Well, I am currently teaching classes here in Sacramento and all throughout the Bay Area, and so um I continue to try to teach and perform in various areas, but my newest project coming up is uh collaboration between uh classical Indian drummers and dancers in a project that's going to be presented in Swarthmore College out in the East Coast.

Oh, other commissioners?

Thank you, Christy.