Born to parents Mei and Shiro Nakano, Philip showed an early aptitude for annoying his folks by playing chopsticks on the piano. Equally annoying was chopsticks on the dinner table, chopsticks on pots and pans and whatever else was handy. Later he annoyed them by playing accordion, organ, and eventually flute, with his fingers. Also annoying was the loud rock, jazz, and classical played on the stereo.
This pattern was finally broken when he learned to play music at other peoples’ houses, or his own. After studying performance and music theory at college he began to annoy other people by playing in public. Some of his less annoying efforts included Continuum, which featured baroque, folk, jazz, rock, and African percussion music in one performance. Some even found his work in the 80’s and 90’s with the reggae/soca band Jumballasy, rather amusing.
Today he continues to distract people by playing swing, jazz, rock, and reggae, on flute, soprano and tenor sax, drums/percussion, and vocals, with Fidalgo Swing and local and regional groups.
