Smiley LIVE! brings Japanese shamisen to concert series

Mike Penny, an award-winning performer on the Tsugaru shamisen, a Japanese fretless three-stringed lute, will entertain at the Contemporary Club, 173 S. Eureka St., at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 19, the next event in the Smiley LIVE concert series.

Penny, a performer and composer based in Los Angeles, has been composing for and performing shamisen across the U.S. and Japan since 2004. He studied in Santa Cruz, California, with Kevin Kmetz and later received the Japan Foundation’s Uchida Fellowship which allowed him to study in Tokyo with the respected Tsugaru shamisen sensei Fukushi Toyoaki in 2007-2008.

Through his many performances and viral video performances on YouTube, Penny has gained a following for his unprecedented style of shamisen playing which combines traditional and extended techniques in a variety of musical contexts including jazz, Balkan folk, Western classical, and popular music. With an in-depth knowledge of not only traditional Japanese folk music, but Western music as well, Penny is active as a studio musician, contributing his shamisen stylings to projects such as PlayStation’s Ghost of Tsushima, Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai, Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles, and more.

This free public event is family-friendly, with a Q&A segment where young and old alike can ask the performers questions about their music, their performance, and anything else they may be curious about. For questions or more information call (909) 798-7565. More information is available at https://mikepennymusic.webflow.io/