Tatsuya Nakatani’s Gong Orchestra

NGO, NAKATANI GONG ORCHESTRA, is a contemporary live Sound Art project that tours throughout North and Central America.

NGO is a continuous, growing community engagement project; and the only bowing Gong orchestra in existence in the world today. The rich harmonies produced from multiple layers of bowed gongs are transformative, engaging and inspiring for both players and audiences.
The gong bows and surrounding instrumentation equipment are handmade by Nakatani Kobo.

For each performance, participating gong players are selected by a local presenter.
Nakatani gives a specialized training workshop to gong players in preparation for the performance. Players will also experience 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 conductor for the evening of the performance.

Nakatani began germinating ideas for N.G.O. in early 2002, and finally took the project on the road in April 2011. Since then he has performed over 100 concerts with N.G.O. internationally. Notable venues include John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., MOCA Cleveland, OH, Tigertail Productions presented at Miami Dade County Auditorium in FL, Bemis Contemporary Art Center in Omaha NE, Columbia Museum of Art in SC, The Issue Project Room in New York City, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas.

N.G.O. has been a visiting artist conducting workshops at a number of universities; including the University of Illinois, Smith College, Ohio State University and Wesleyan.

Tatsuya Nakatani

Tatsuya Nakatani is a Japanese avant garde percussionist and acoustic sound artist. Based in the United States, he has released over 80 recordings in the last two decades and tours extensively. Nakatani has developed his own unique instrumentation, creating new sounds and extended techniques. Utilizing gongs, drums, cymbals, singing bowls, his breath, wooden sticks, metal objects, and the idiosyncratic bows and mallets he handcrafts in his workshop; he sculpts an intense, intuitively primitive, expressive sound form that defies genre. His work engages improvised-experimental music and movement, while still retaining the traditional sense of space, depth and deep time found in Japanese art. The Nakatani Gong Orchestra (NGO) is a mobile community engagement project he has developed and grown over the last decade. Nakatani organizes and conducts local ensembles in performances of his complex harmonic compositions on 15 bowed gongs. These works are site specific by nature, taking place in abandoned grain silos, viaducts and other unique architectural spaces as well as in traditional concert halls and galleries. Nakatani teaches master classes and workshops at universities, giving students an opportunity to share his unique approach and philosophy for creating visceral, non-linear, experiential sounds.