BIO
Born in Houston, Texas, Nicholas Hill comes from a musical family, and he started learning how to play the piano at a young age. In elementary school, he would go on to learn how to play the Cello and join the school’s orchestra, but, for a brief period of time, he would stop pursuing music to explore the visual arts. However, after a while, his mother conveyed that he still had to learn some musical instrument, and in a “cheeky” response, Nicholas told his mother that he would learn how to play the drums. His mother agreed, and drums proved to be “world changing for me [Nicholas] [...] in a musical perspective.” In high school, he would become captivated by a taiko performance by Kaminari Taiko of Houston. He would eventually join this group and perform with them throughout college at Rice University, where he received a BA in economics. After graduating, he would move to Japan and train and perform with Ondekoza, an intense Taiko group incorporating both physical and musical training. However, he would ultimately come back to the states and eventually start his culinary journey. He became sous chef at a high-end restaurant and the executive chef of a friend’s Japanese restaurant before ultimately moving to New York to pursue a career in IT. In this interview, Nicholas Hill describes his early musical/non-musical endeavors, his diverse experiences in various fields, and his more recent musical endeavors.