Indexical presents Tatsuya Nakatani’s non-traditional contemporary sound art project, the Nakatani Gong Orchestra (NGO). In each NGO performance, local musicians are trained in Nakatani’s technique for playing his adapted bowed gong, and are conducted in the performance of an original composition. In the last decade, the NGO has performed hundreds of concerts involving thousands of participants around the world in the creation of these transformative sound works.

Nakatani’s adaption of the Chinese wind gong to respond to his percussive bowing technique in his solo work (c. 1995) led to the inclusion of other players trained in his methods to realize his compositions. The Kobo bows, mallets, and surrounding instrumentation equipment have all been developed and are hand crafted by Tatsuya Nakatani. After ten years of planning and preparation, the NGO began touring in 2011 with four adapted gongs and has grown to 17 gongs by 2019. It is the only bowed gong orchestra in the world.

If you are interested in participating in the Nakatani Gong Orchestra, please contact [email protected]. The workshop and performance are not paid, but dinner and refreshments are provided by Indexical between the workshop and performance.

This event will be held across the courtyard from Indexical at the Tannery World Dance and Cultural Center, Studio 110.

 

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.