@"Traditional rituals recast as theater, and contemporary thoughts about ancient instruments both figure in Kodo's performance, which includes ancient and modern compositions. Yet with tense, angular postures, with stylized, frozen gestures and, in one playful piece, with animal-like scampering and slithering, Kodo reminds its audience that, above all, its music is a matter of flesh and blood, wood and stretched skin. Kodo can raise the roof, but the group can also show extraordinary finesse."
@"Having spent some time with them, jazz drummer and composer Max Roach thinks of the Japanese drummers of Kodo as regular guys. On stage it's another story - clad in sweatbands and loincloths, they are like percussionist kamikazes. You expect them to drum till they drop. "The technique they use to play percussion instruments is totally different from anything I've ever seen" he says... They deal with that 'visual sound' more than anyone I've ever known.""
1995 ...the 14 musicians created waves of percussive sound that seemed to turn Carnegie Hall itself into a resonant cavity covered with animal skin.
The concert was a celebration of organic patterns.
Indeed, if there is such a thing as perfection in music, Kodo comes as near to it as any group in the world.
Superlatives don't really exist to convey the primal power and bravura beauty of Kodo.
Throughout, the devil of it is the combination of the discipline of a surgeon's scalpel with the primitive, muscular endurance of a cavalry charge.The speed and dexterity are as impressive as the physical tenacity is breathtaking.
Heart of the beat -Kodo goes as far back as the cave for its intoxicating pulses.
