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	Michael Komatsu Doherty Shakuhachi 古松禅 尺八 道場
	□□□□□	"To me, music is not a fixed idea.  It is not what you think it is.  You might think of a scale of seven notes, but that is not music.  Music cannot be limited to one form.  It is all around you if you listen carefully.  The sounds of water are music, or the wind in the trees, or children in the fields, or birds singing and crying- that is all music.  Even the sound of boiling can be music…  All of these are just parts of “one sound”… It is everywhere around you.  Listen for yourselves."  -Watazumido, from the film "Sukiyaki and Chips"	All rights reserved (c) 2008 - 2012 m.a.doherty.  All images and sound by m.a. doherty except where noted.

Michael Komatsu Doherty is a shakuhachi player and teacher who studies with Dai Shihan Michael Chikuzen Gould, in the tradition of Dokyoku (Watazumi influenced performance).  He achieved the rank of jun shihan in 2011  and was given the chikumei (bamboo name), "Komatsuzen" (Old Pine Zen) by Chikuzen.

While continuing his studies in shakuhachi Michael is helping to transmit the knowledge and tradition of this expressive and meditative Japanese art through performance and instruction, from his home near the base of Pikes Peak in Old Colorado City, Colorado.  Michael is also available to perform for public and private events, to give lectures and shakuhachi demonstrations.

Michael first heard shakuhachi as a budding composer, around the same time that he was exposed to John Cage’s ideas and freedoms involving sound’s bare essence, silence, and the integration of music’s sonic environment.  He recalls how the translucency of the music and silences between honkyoku phrases complimented his studies in Zen Buddhism that had begun around the same time.  Over the years an evolving understanding of silence/negative space in music became more and more important in his compositions, musical understanding and aesthetics.  Deep listening, hearing, an awareness of space, and silence all laid bare sound’s richness. This aesthetic understanding, and his 25 years of experience in music, paved the way to the shakuhachi and its rich context- traditional aesthetics, history, its relationship with Zen Buddhism, and its well-known challenges of performance.  

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