2 - To Morro Bay

"I had unusual parents because, while I was growing up they were farmers, although my father was university educated, an architectural engineer, and my mother was a microbiologist and a pianist.  So that already is slightly unusual, at least for that region to have parents with that level of educational background and training.  The Japanese Americans have always put a very, very strong emphasis upon education, and both my parents' respective families were no exception.  They were very much encouraged and supported to go to university.  But through circumstances dealing with the health of my grandfather - the farm was my father's father's enterprise - it was necessary for my father to return to the farm and to take over the enterprise.

Both of my parents are of Japanese heritage but are American born, as I am.  The family has been away from Japan for over 100 years, so we are real Americans: third and fourth generation Californians now.

I was given music instruction from a very early age - from six already - by Korisheli, a music teacher who had to leave Germany during the war for obvious reasons.  He came to America penniless but very talented as a musician and he took a teaching degree.  His first job offer was to be the elementary school teacher in our little town, and his economic situation was such that he could not say no.  So, much to our good fortune, he came and he constructed a conservatory there.
In those years - the late 50s and all throughout the 60s - California had a visionary approach to education.  It used an extraordinary amount of tax money, public support and political support to develop what we call a public-school education system that was considered to be the best in the United States.  Now things have changed of course, but at that particular time if you had a strong vision and ambition you could really take things a long way through the education system.  My teacher asked for and received funding for not only a new building to build a conservatory but also all of the instruments, all of the teachers and all the support staff.  He had two orchestras and three bands going in a town had little over 2000 people. My parents belonged to one of the adult orchestras, so it really got the whole town involved and started us very, very young, and I think most of the entire class wanted to be involved, for social reasons if nothing else.

Korisheli's training was particularly rigorous and very, very much modelled upon the European conservatory system, with early morning classes before normal school and then, after classes, also more rehearsals.  They were long days - seven o'clock to six o'clock - for us kids, plus weekends at his home; theory training, theory analysis, aesthetics and philosophical discussions, all thrown at us at a very early age.  In that sense I was 'leaving California' already.

That kind of exposure and orientation; having that as the main introduction to music, now looking back is probably the one factor that made it possible for me to come to Europe.  Had I not been trained and taught by a European from my very early years, I'm not so sure I could have done it; it's just so far removed from California.  As my wife says: 'It's the end of the world, because once you get to California, if you keep going, you start coming back!"

 
(Taken from an interview that took place in October 2002)