“Thank you for putting on a lovely performance! I’ve received many compliments on what a great match your performance was to the event.” – Rumi Tsuchihashi, 55th Anniversary of Seattle Japanese Garden celebration, University of Washington Arboretum
” . . . your Beautiful songs of Koto Jazz . . . Very Beautiful.” – Jamie Trent, Global Music Marketing Strategist, SmoothJazz.com
“Thanks again for playing. It was really beautiful and I look forward to hearing you again!” – Susan Moore, Dragonfly Holistic Health Center
“Visit kotojazz.com. It’s filled with wonderful posts about the artist, Chris Kenji Beer, and his aesthetics, which are all about the impermanence of beauty: the falling petals of cherry blossoms, carp in a pond, leaves animated by a breeze, the water flowing over an ancient stone in a garden. The music which blends jazz with traditional Japanese koto music, attempts to capture the only eternal thing there is in existence, which is the moment.” –Charles Mudede, The Stranger Weekly
OTHER QUOTE WORTHIES:
“The piece expresses “infinite love. The glories of the universe,” he said. “And that, to me, is something that we all need as humans. That ability to manufacture, to create hope in the depths of despair, because we all go through terrible moments in our lives, and those are the moments when we have to go deep in the reservoir, and find something that comes out, and can give us comfort.” — Yo Yo Ma
“All the principles of heaven and earth are living inside you. Life itself is truth and this will never change.”
– Morihei Ueshiba (see more Morihei Ueshiba quotes)
“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.” – Ludwig Von Beethoven
“We can do no great things. We can only do small things with great love.” – Mother Teresa (see more Mother Teresa quotes)
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them” . . . . “The only source of knowledge is experience”. . . . “Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”
– Albert Einstein (see more Einstein quotes)
“Do not judge me by my successes. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got up again.” – Nelson Mandela (see Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom movie and images)
“Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not get bent out of shape.” – foster mother of Buck, the true “horse whisperer” (see Buck, the movie)
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/pierreteil114239.html#KXZzbvhIsoU1UgiV.99
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi (see Gandhi, the movie)
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” – Dalai Lama
KOTOJAZZ.COM 
This week’s theme: THE FLOWER
Iwanu ga hana – Literally translated as, “Not speaking is the flower”; means “Some things are better left unsaid; Silence is golden”.
“Every flower is a soul blossoming in Nature.” – Gerard De Nervel
“Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light.” – Theodore Roethke
“Tengai hatsyuki
Mt. Fuji kaika Cheri
Shiro haru hona.”
Rough Translation:
The first snow of the season beyond the heavens (or horizon)
Around the white collar (base) of Mt. Fuji flowers bloom
in springtime. — Haiku poem by poet nicknamed, myrockopera
This week’s theme: NATURE
(Kachou Fuugetsu) “Experience the beauties of nature, and in doing so learn about yourself.” (Literally: Flower, Bird, Wind, Moon)
“Study the teachings of the pine tree, the bamboo, and the plum blossom. The pine is evergreen, firmly rooted, and venerable. The bamboo is strong, resilient, unbreakable. The plum blossom is hardy, fragrant, and elegant.” – Morihei Ueshiba (see more Morihei Ueshiba quotes)
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” – Albert Einstein (see more Einstein quotes at Albert Einstein quotes)
This week’s theme: THE WIND
. . . “And so exposed (O leaves before the wind!)
We bear this flowing fire, forever free,
And learn through devious paths to find
The whole, the center, and perhaps unbind
The mystery
Where there are no roots, only fervent leaves,
Nourished on meditations and the air,
Where all that comes is also all that leaves,
And every hope compassionately lives . . . ”
– by May Sarton, author and poet, from “Leaves before the Wind”. (see more Sarton poems at May Sarton poems)
The wind is the whisper of our mother the earth. The wind is the hand of our father the sky.
The wind watches over our struggles and pleasures.
The wind is the goddess who first learned to fly.
The wind is the bearer of bad and good tidings, the weaver of darkness, the bringer of dawn.
The wind gives the rain, then builds us a rainbow, the wind is the singer who sang the first song.
The wind knows the songs of cities and canyons, the thunder of mountains, the roar of the sea.
The wind is the taker and giver of mornings, the wind is the symbol of all that is free.
(Windsong, written by John Denver and Joe Henry)
This week’s theme: WATER
“Good luck and Good work for the happy mountain raindrops,
each one of them a high waterfall in itself,
descending from the cliffs and hollows of the
clouds to the cliffs and hollows of the rocks,
out of the sky-thunder into the thunder of the falling rivers.” — John Muir
“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.” — Lao Tzu
“In the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”
– “A River Runs Through It”, by Norman MacLean
A hill without a name
Veiled in morning mist.
The beginning of autumn:
Sea and emerald paddy
Both the same green…. – Matsuo Basho, Haiku about Spring
…. “A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.” – Robert Frost, Going for Water
“There is an immense desert where man is never alone. Where he can feel how the lives of all tremble inside of him. The sea is just a container for all the tremendous supernatural things that exist in it. It is not only movement and love, but the living infinity.” – Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries, but in how those advances are applied to reduce inequity.” – Bill Gates