Percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani is a road warrior who travels the country by modified panel van and performs hundreds of concerts each year in cities all over the world. The Nakatani Gong Orchestra is a touring project in which local musicians are trained in Nakatani’s bow technique and conducted through a performance of his transformative works on a collection of seventeen Chinese wind gongs. The Kobo bows, mallets, and surrounding equipment used in the performance have all been hand crafted by Nakatani himself. It is the only ongoing bowed gong orchestra project in the world.

​

About Tatsuya Nakatani:

Tatsuya Nakatani is an avant-garde percussionist, composer, and artist of sound. Active internationally since the 1990’s; 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. With his activity in the new music, improvisation and experimental music scenes, Nakatani has a long history of collaboration. 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. Nakatani creates his distinctive music centered around his adapted bowed gong, supported by an array of drums, cymbals, and singing bowls. In consort with his hand carved Kobo Bows, it is an instrument he has spent decades developing. Nakatani approaches his orchestral project (NGO) 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.