ICA LIVE: Tatsuya Nakatani Gong Orchestra

Tatsuya Nakatani is an avant-garde percussionist, composer, and sound artist. 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 centers around his adapted bowed gong, supported by an array of drums, cymbals, and singing bowls. 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.

For his ICA performance, Tatsuya Nakatani will be joined by 16 gong-playing volunteers, recruited from the Richmond community.

ICA Live is guest curated by David Riley.