The thunderous sound you’ll hear erupting from the Sony Centre stage on Thursday was born in the quiet, rural, almost monastic life the artists lead in Japan.

Living communally on Sado Island, the Kodo Drummers dedicate themselves to their craft in a way that is all consuming.

Canadian Kiyoshi Nagata apprenticed with the troupe 20 years ago in his quest to improve his drumming skills. It was a life unlike any he’d known before.

“I lived with five other apprentices in a schoolhouse. We got up at 4:30 and ran 10 kilometres. We’d clean the schoolhouse, practice, prepare lunch, practice, eat dinner.”

There was no smoking, no drinking alcohol and the television was only used to watch instructional videos.

Nagata will share his knowledge of the internationally touring ensemble Thursday before the 8 p.m. show Kodo One Earth Tour: Mystery at the Sony Centre. The pre-show chat by Nagata, who leads the Toronto-based taiko drumming group, Nagata Shachu, is designed to prepare audiences for the unusual nature of the craft involving drumming, dancing and singing the ancient folk tales of Japan.

His talk will examine the history of taiko, the various drums used in performance, the costumes worn and how the music is taught and learned.

And it’s not just about the drums on this tour. Toronto audiences “are going to see something that they’ve never seen before,” says Mark Hammond, interim director of Sony Centre.

Expect dragons, masks and enormous props to create an eye-popping spectacle in Mystery, under the direction of artistic director and Kabuki artist Tamasaburo Bando.

Hammond began presenting the group in Canada in the early 1980s after seeing them on tour. He was amazed by their athleticism.

“They’d run the Boston Marathon and then play a concert that night,” Hammond recalls. While they still run, marathons are no longer part of their regimen.

“Their discipline is incredible. They are so young and so fit,” says Hammond, noting their art and lifestyle “harks back to an older, simpler time in Japan. They are maintaining the folk traditions and drumming is a form of celebration.”

Muscles bulge on arms and bare backs as the drummers pound on giant drums with mallets, swinging their arms in great arcs.

But it’s not all noisy. “It can be very quiet, or robust and noisy. They shake the dust out of the chandeliers, but there are softer sounds too.”

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Drummer Eri Uchida first saw the group in Vancouver when she was attending secondary school in British Columbia to improve her English skills and see the world outside of Japan.

She applied to be an apprentice and experienced much of what Nagata had two decades earlier, except fast walking had replaced the 10-kilometre run.

Uchida, 28, has been with the group for seven years and recently moved into her own rented house, out of the communal dormitories.

“We were always together,” she says of both the practicing and performing schedules of the group, which is on the road touring most of the year.

The more than 30 performers practice non-stop on their island, she says, so that “all day I hear the sound of drumming, it lures me back to sleep.”

She both dances and drums in the show and has composed a piece called “Chit Chat,” which evokes the “sounds of girls talking” through drumming on small instruments.

It is an exciting art form to perform, she says, in an interview from Rochester, N.Y., before their Toronto appearance.

“You can even feel the vibrations through your skin. At the end, I am exhausted physically and mentally.”

It is a life of artistic expression and cultural relevance, she says.

“I love the sound of Kodo and I love how Kodo is going all over the world. It is the best.”

Although Nagata was asked to join the group, he declined and returned to Canada. Joining them would mean more than just performing but immersing himself in their culture and philosophy. At the age of 22 it seemed too much of a mountain to climb.

“They have a philosophy to live simply. There was no heat in winter, no air conditioning in summer,” he says. “It was back to basics, living without modern conveniences.”

But after 16 years he continues, with a five-member group, to practice the art he learned among them.

Kodo One Earth Tour: Mystery is at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts on Thursday at 8 p.m. Tickets at 1-855-872-7669 or ticketmaster.ca

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