Yesterday I went to a memorial service for my old friend Robin Wadsworth, who long ago played for and danced with Berkeley Morris, and even longer ago was a drummer in the Queen's Guard at the Northern and Southern California Renaissance Faires. In more recent years, Robin had taken his drumming skills to the San Francisco Taiko Dojo, where he became a member of the core performance group, and he also used the power of Taiko to bring much joy to the deaf community of the Bay Area.

Robin had a knack for celebrating life, and his memorial did the same. At its climax, SF Taiko Dojo cut loose with an emotion-clearing drumming tribute that will stay with me forever. I don't know if many here knew Robbie, but I wanted everyone to know of him.

Here is a link to his obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle, and here it is in text form:

Robinson Wadsworth -- musician, adventurer
--Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, September 16, 2006

A memorial service will be held Sunday for Robinson Cushing Wadsworth, a high-spirited Bay Area musician who brought music into the lives of deaf children through Japanese Taiko drumming and sparked their sense of adventure with kayaking, river rafting and hiking trips around California.

Mr. Wadsworth, a resident of Oakland, died Sept. 5 while snorkeling with his wife in the Caribbean. He was 42.

"He was one of those people who had a huge, huge heart," said Lucas Metcalf-Tobin, who worked with Mr. Wadsworth for 13 years at the San Francisco Recreation & Park Department's Project Insight for deaf and hard-of-hearing youth.

Friends and family described the man they called Robin as an extraordinary individual who immersed himself in whatever project seemed worth learning -- and mastered it.

When he began working with the deaf, Mr. Wadsworth learned American Sign Language. When their parents showed up speaking little English, he dusted off his high school Spanish and used it fearlessly. Other parents spoke Chinese, so he studied Cantonese and practiced it with strangers.

They laughed at first, Metcalf-Tobin said, "like, oh, how cute, he's trying to speak Chinese." But he improved until "they'd respond in Chinese."

When Mr. Wadsworth visited Japanese students who were deaf, he learned Japanese Sign Language. When he wanted to take students rock climbing and river rafting, he became certificated in those sports. But perhaps most remarkable was his skill at Taiko drumming, an ancient art requiring musical and athletic aptitude. Mr. Wadsworth had seen a performance and signed up at the San Francisco Taiko Dojo -- home of the nation's premier drumming troupe.

But he didn't merely learn Taiko techniques. He mastered them and became a member of the dojo's elite performance group.

"To warm up, you run 2 or 3 miles and do a couple hundred push-ups every time you practice," said Gary Towsley, a friend and fellow drummer who never entered that rigorous inner circle, whose members perform around the country and in Japan.

"It's not for the faint of heart," Towsley said. "It's a combination of extreme martial arts, dancing and passionate, exuberant drumming. It's absolutely high energy and designed to get the players and the audience into a very high level of spirit and enthusiasm."

In other words, it was tailor-made for Mr. Wadsworth. "He was top flight," Towsley said.

And Taiko drumming -- thunderous and thrilling -- was tailor-made for his kids at Project Insight, decided Mr. Wadsworth, who kept a set of drums at the Recreation and Park Department.

The drums were so loud that many youngsters could hear their sounds, Metcalf-Tobin said. Even those who were profoundly deaf could feel the drum's vibrations.

"They'd just go wild on it," he said.

Born on Valentine's Day 1964 in Washington, D.C., Mr. Wadsworth grew up in the rural Marin County community of Woodacre. His gifts of music and fearlessness showed up early, recalled his aunt, Anne Hahn-Smith, when he persuaded his kindergarten teacher to give him an old class piano -- then taught himself how to play it. He also learned to play classical and Chinese flutes, guitar, saxophone and the didgeridoo.

A 1982 graduate of Drake High in San Anselmo, Mr. Wadsworth studied music and math at UC Berkeley, graduating in 1991. He lived in San Francisco until the late 1990s, when he moved to Oakland.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, he played the bodhran -- a Celtic drum -- at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, and the flute at the Dickens Christmas Fair. "He was friendly, open, social and talked to everybody," said his good friend and fellow fair musician Avis Minger.

About a dozen years ago, Mr. Wadsworth was working at a camp near Yosemite when he fell in love with Diana Vuong, who also worked there. Their wedding took place last October "in a joyous backyard celebration in their Oakland home," Hahn-Smith wrote in a tribute to her nephew.

They honeymooned in Belize, snorkeling and scuba diving. "They both loved being up close to the beautiful fish, squid, sea turtles, and coral," Hahn-Smith wrote.

This month, the couple traveled to the island of Bonaire to dive and snorkel. A strong swimmer, Mr. Wadsworth could hold his breath for two minutes or more, enabling him to snorkel to depths of 35 feet.
On Sept. 5, Mr. Wadsworth was snorkeling in such a manner when he blacked out and drowned. Doctors blamed a buildup of nitrogen in his blood from scuba diving a day earlier.

"It is a small consolation that Robin died doing something that he loved," family and friends wrote in a letter. "He has been such an amazing example of how to live your life fully, and with such enthusiasm, joy and love."

In addition to his wife, Mr. Wadsworth is survived by his parents, Richard Wadsworth of Lewisburg, W.Va., and Patricia Smith Vahedi of San Francisco; and his sisters, Katrina Vahedi of Santa Cruz and Kate Wadsworth of Lafayette, La.

The memorial gathering will be at 1 p.m. in the Quail and Owl picnic areas in Redwood Regional Park in Oakland, with a service in the Old Church grove at about 2 p.m.