Sept 23

8pm $15-30

Leaven Community

Tatsuya Nakatani is an avant-garde percussionist, composer, and artist of sound. Active internationally since the 1990s, Nakatani has released over 80 recordings and tours extensively, performing over 150 concerts a year. His primary focus is his solo work and his large ensemble project, the Nakatani Gong Orchestra. He teaches master classes and lectures at universities and music conservatories around the world. Originally from Japan, he makes his home in the desert town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. With his activity in new music, improvisation, and experimental music, Nakatani has a long history of collaboration.

Nakatani’s distinctive music centered around his adapted bowed gong, supported by an array of drums, cymbals, and singing bowls. In consort with his personally hand-carved Kobo Bows, he has spent decades refining and developing his sound as an arrangement of formations of vibrations, incorporated in shimmering layers of silence and texture. Within this contemporary work, one can still recognize the dramatic pacing, formal elegance and space (ma) felt in traditional Japanese music.

NGO: “The NAKATANI GONG ORCHESTRA”, is a contemporary live sound art project that
tours internationally. Tatsuya Nakatani began germinating ideas for NGO in early 2002 and
finally took the project on the road in April 2011. Since then he has performed over 100 concerts
with NGO internationally (before pandemic 2020). The rich harmonies produced from multiple
layers of orchestral gongs are transformative, engaging, and inspiring for both players and
audiences. Each performance is unique, as it involved players that Nakatani trains from the
community in which the performance occurs.
NGO is a continuous, growing community engagement sound art project; and the only bowing
Gong orchestra in existence in the world today. Artistic concept, musical composition,
conduction, and direction are Tatsuya Nakatani.
For each performance, participating gong players are selected by a local presenter or the
curator. Nakatani gives a specialized “training workshop” to gong players in preparation for the
performance. Players will also learn Nakatani’s own unique point of view regarding gong
techniques and will experience undiscovered dimensions while immersed in the vibrations and
sounds during a training workshop. Nakatani is the composer and orchestral conductor for the
evening of the performance.
For the North American concerts, all Instruments are transported and provided. Nakatani’s
collection of Chinese Wind Gongs have made of bronze, and usually 17 gongs are featured on
stage requiring 14 players(see picture below). Handmade gong bows and hardware are
handmade by Nakatani at his atelier, Nakatani-Kobo.