JAMES FERNER, originally from New Jersey, has lived in Tokyo since 1991. He has been studying noh with Sadamu Omura and Richard Emmert as well as the kotsuzumi and the otsuzumi with Mitsuo Kama. He has been a participant in Richard Emmert’s Noh Training Project based in Tokyo for the past three years and he has recently joined the Noh Training Project in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania along with Theater nohgaku. “I've played the guitar since I was young. I was in several bands, nothing worthy of note. The most interesting and most painful was called “The Apricot Brandy Band,” which played at weddings and in which I was forced to wear a tuxedo with a ruffled apricot shirt. I studied the viola in college, but it was not a music college. I got good enough to play some local jobs in other schools and other minor concerts. I once played a viola obbligato to a soprano at someone’s wedding ceremony in church. Was that scary! And even worse, I once stood on the street playing the viola in my tuxedo again for somebody’s daughter’s sweet-sixteen party.”