The Nakatani Gong Orches­tra (NGO) is a trav­el­ing par­tic­i­pa­to­ry com­mu­ni­ty orches­tra found­ed and led by Japan­ese mas­ter per­cus­sion­ist Tat­suya Nakatani that per­forms Nakatani’s orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions and direct­ed impro­vi­sa­tions. This inno­v­a­tive project brings togeth­er local musi­cians of diverse backgrounds—regardless of pri­or expe­ri­ence, pro­fes­sion­al or amateur—to col­lab­o­rate with Nakatani on his adapt­ed bowed gongs. Under his direc­tion, the ensem­ble explores guid­ed group impro­vi­sa­tion, craft­ing immer­sive and trans­for­ma­tive sound­scapes. Since its incep­tion in 2011, the NGO has expand­ed from four to sev­en­teen gongs of vary­ing sizes and pitch­es, per­form­ing hun­dreds of con­certs world­wide with thou­sands of participants.

For each per­for­mance, a local orga­niz­er assem­bles a group of 16 gong play­ers, who receive a detailed prepa­ra­tion package—including hand sig­nals, per­for­mance com­mands, and instruc­tion­al videos. On the day of the event, Tat­suya Nakatani leads an immer­sive work­shop, guid­ing par­tic­i­pants as they prac­tice with the instru­ments, refine their tech­niques, and learn to respond to con­duct­ing cues, seam­less­ly inte­grat­ing them into the final performance.

Nakatani trav­els with all nec­es­sary equip­ment, includ­ing his cus­tom-made Kobo bows, mal­lets, gongs, and stands—ensuring each per­for­mance is ful­ly sup­port­ed by his metic­u­lous­ly craft­ed instru­ments. All the mate­r­i­al is assem­bled the morn­ing of the show by the host­ing orga­ni­za­tion and the par­tic­i­pat­ing musicians.

On Octo­ber 6, 2024, the ensem­ble made its Montreal/Quebec debut at La Sala Rossa as part of the FLUX Fes­ti­val, a com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive unit­ing key pre­sen­ters and orga­niz­ers in Montreal’s cre­ative music scene.This con­cert was orga­nized by the improvised/experimental music series and col­lec­tive Mar­di Spaghet­ti and facil­i­tat­ed by Raphaël Foisy-Cou­ture, for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Cana­di­an Music Net­work, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Cre­ative Music Hub, Inno­va­tion en con­cert, and Arts in the Margins.

The Nakatani Gong Orches­tra (NGO) is the world’s only bow­ing gong orches­tra, found­ed and led by Japan­ese mas­ter per­cus­sion­ist Tat­suya Nakatani. A cel­e­brat­ed exper­i­men­tal per­cus­sion­ist, com­pos­er, and sound artist now based in New Mex­i­co, Nakatani has been inter­na­tion­al­ly active since the 1990s, releas­ing over 80 record­ings and per­form­ing world­wide. Renowned for his inno­v­a­tive tech­niques on bowed gongs, drums, cym­bals, and singing bowls, he is also an instru­ment mak­er, craft­ing the Kobo bows, mal­lets, and unique equip­ment used in his per­for­mances. Nakatani is also a ded­i­cat­ed edu­ca­tor, reg­u­lar­ly con­duct­ing mas­ter­class­es at uni­ver­si­ties and music conservatories.

The per­for­mance show­cased the NGO’s dis­tinc­tive and mes­mer­iz­ing sound.

Here’s an edit­ed tran­script of the pre­sen­ta­tion made by Tat­suya Nakatani fol­low­ing a solo per­for­mance pre­ced­ing the NGO per­for­mance on that night:

[Loud applause]

Thank you very much for com­ing tonight!

My name is Tat­suya Nakatani, and I’m a per­cus­sion­ist. I’m orig­i­nal­ly from Osa­ka, Japan. I moved to the U.S. 30 years ago, and cur­rent­ly I live in Truth or Con­se­quences, which is a south­ern New Mex­i­co small town. I’ve been play­ing per­cus­sion all my life. I’m on tour. From New Mex­i­co to here took me over two months.

[Audi­ence laughing]

I left my house on August 5th, and I’m here today. I’ve been play­ing many places and I’m going back to the U.S. tomor­row. Tonight, actu­al­ly! Tonight I’m dri­ving back, and I’m going to go back towards New Mex­i­co. 

[Impressed exhales from the public|

Tonight I’m open­ing for my ensem­ble. I have been play­ing a drum set since I was a high school kid. A drum set like: hi-hat, cym­bals, etc. At some point I start­ed shift­ing my inter­est to sound and more extend­ed tech­nique-based play­ing and I start­ed play­ing solo per­cus­sions, and at the same time, I start­ed bow­ing per­cus­sions. So in the begin­ning, I was using a bass bow, cel­lo bow, vio­lin bow, to bow on the the cym­bals and the singing bowls. Around 2005, 2006, I start­ed mak­ing my own bows, because a con­ven­tion­al instru­ment bow does­n’t work for the per­cus­sions. So I start­ed invent­ing and test­ing pro­to­types. At that time I had in mind this gong orches­tra project; “maybe It could be more”. So I’ve been work­ing on this project since 2005. In my head, maybe since 2000. 

[Audi­ence laughing]

It’s a long-time project, my life­time project. And I start­ed gong orches­tra around 2008. It was a small ensem­ble, only four gongs. It’s expen­sive for an inde­pen­dent DIY musi­cian to pur­chase these. 

[Audi­ence laughing]

So I keep buy­ing lit­tle by lit­tle, and today I have 16 gongs! Includ­ing me, there will be 17 gongs played to you. I think this is a life­time expe­ri­ence, you know, 17 gongs in front of you. How many peo­ple have expe­ri­enced that? 

[Audi­ence laugh­ing and cheering]

I’m going to explain a lit­tle bit, too. I’m Asian, and I’m from Japan. But these gongs are not from Japan, and these bows are not from Japan, either. And this music you’re about to hear is not from Japan. So noth­ing is about Japan. 

[Audi­ence laughing]

I use only the tim­ing, actu­al­ly.  It’s in my biog­ra­phy, talk­ing about the “Ma”. “Ma” is the tim­ing. “Ma” is the spac­ing between A and B. So I use lots of ma, in my music. So every­thing is space and expand, and then using grav­i­ty to dawn. That’s the “Ma”. But it’s not about Japan. It’s not about any coun­try or region. So my work is from nowhere. I live in the U.S., but I’m not Amer­i­can. I’m kind of away from Japan. I’m not Japan­ese, maybe. I don’t know [Tat­suya laughs]

So these are Chi­nese gongs. It’s called the Wuhan gong and it’s also called the Wind gong. It has a straight edge. Many South­east Asian [coun­tries] have gongs who varies from dif­fer­ent region. Maybe some peo­ple here know more than me, but some have edges or nip­ples and spe­cif­ic tones. But this is a disc, just a bronze disc and I can change the pitch­es. The vibra­tion is mov­ing around inside. Some­times it stays there, Some­times it’s from the cen­ter. And some­times I’m using two bows. Than two tones go inside the same gong, and it becomes vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vo [imi­tat­ing oscil­la­tion sounds]. The two beat­ing with each oth­er; that kind of effect as well. 

So I’ve been work­ing on bows and gongs for many years. And I try to teach peo­ple and do my orches­tral work. So today we have 16 local Mon­tre­al play­ers. We did a work­shop all after­noon. 

[Loud cheer­ing from the audi­ence] 

I pre­fer you to not have earplugs, because I’m very sen­si­tive about the sound. When I go to rock shows, I always put on earplugs.  But for this, at some point it’s loud. It’s real­ly loud… It’s incred­i­bly loud I’ll tell you! 

[Audi­ence laughing]

But it’s not for­ev­er.  

[Audi­ence laugh­ing louder]

It’s not a con­stant. It’s just one moment. You just observe whole vibra­tions, and that’s the best. Not just from the ear. Your organs, your skin, your bone, your hair is lis­ten­ing to this as well. So that’s my project. It’s a vibra­tional project.

Maybe you can tell if you [record] with an iPhone or a smart­phone to cap­ture it when you’re back home:  “it was great, I want to post on my Insta­gram!”. And then it sounds like bii­i­i­i­i­i­ipppp (imi­tat­ing the sound of a flat­line). 

[Audi­ence laughing]

It’s not a sound. It sounds dif­fer­ent. It’s a vibra­tion. So you are here. You are about to expe­ri­ence it. And it’s pret­ty dif­fi­cult to cap­ture with micro­phone and record­ings. But it’s live. It’s air. And you are alive here. So I hope you enjoy it. 

[…]

Thank you so much for com­ing again.

[Audi­ence cheering]

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The musi­cians for this Mon­tre­al edi­tion of the Tat­suya Nakatani Gong Orches­tra were:

Geneviève Ack­er­man, Miel Azeve­do, Annabelle Chouinard, Soledad Coy­oli, Mar­ilou Craft, Susan­na Hood, Atsushi Ike­da, Chloe Jack­son-Reynolds, Pablo Jimenez, Jean Néant aka Joni Void, Shota Naka­mu­ra, Rox­anne Nes­bitt, Fah­mid Nibesh, Helios Par­adis, Chris­telle Saint-Julien, and Tahlia Stacey

Com­ments from the Mon­tre­al participants: 

It was a true joy to par­tic­i­pate in the immer­sive encounter with Tat­suya Nakatani and with such a wide array of musi­cians from the impro­vised music com­mu­ni­ty. It felt like a rare gift to learn and then per­form togeth­er in this way, hav­ing enough time to real­ly enter into and taste anoth­er musi­cian’s world and then to put that expe­ri­ence into prac­tice with an audi­ence. It was nour­ish­ing per­son­al­ly, musi­cal­ly, and in tan­gi­bly feel­ing cre­ativ­i­ty as and in com­mu­ni­ty. I am very grate­ful.  — Susan­na Hood

It was one of a kind expe­ri­ence. Play­ing a big gong was phys­i­cal­ly way tougher than I could imag­ine but I was hap­py to be includ­ed to such a spe­cial oppor­tu­ni­ty. I liked Tat­suya’s pas­sion. — Shota Naka­mu­ra

Thank you so much for the oppor­tu­ni­ty. It was a real­ly cool expe­ri­ence to play with so many dif­fer­ent musi­cians from dif­fer­ent back­grounds but in such a nov­el and uni­fied way, learn­ing to read those wild cues togeth­er — Atsushi Ike­da

The expe­ri­ence of the Tast­suya Nakatani Gong Orches­tra was pow­er­ful and deeply mov­ing, Such a com­mu­nal musi­cal plunge into the world of vibra­tions is enough to leave shiv­ers of hap­pi­ness between the ears for a long time! It was a work­shop and a con­cert of kind­ness and sim­plic­i­ty, in the pure joy of shar­ing oth­er­world­ly sounds. Long live this mar­vel­lous project, which I hope I’ll have the good for­tune to wit­ness again along the way. Thank you for every­thing! — Annabelle Chouinard

Dur­ing this day of prepa­ra­tion, I had the chance to immerse myself in the world of the per­cus­sion­ist, through his pre­cise knowl­edge of his pre­cious and mas­sive set of very spe­cial gongs. I lent my body to the expe­ri­ence in an attempt to draw the right vibra­tions from these instru­ments, and I have to say that phys­i­cal­ly it was a chal­lenge, but one that was duly reward­ed by the direct con­tact of the rever­ber­a­tions and the syn­er­gy of the ensem­ble in the moment. This per­for­mance and the per­son of Tat­suya con­tin­ue to influ­ence me in my own per­for­mances since Octo­ber 6, 2024. -  Helios Par­adis

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Thanks to Li Qi for film­ing this performance.

Thanks to Elaine Gra­ham and Adam from Mlynel­lo Art Mlynel­lo for the pic­tures of the event.

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The Cana­di­an Pre­miere of the Tat­suya Nakatani Gong Orches­tra took place on Thurs­day, June 15th 2017 at The Mount Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in Peterborough.

It was facil­i­tat­ed by musi­cian and orga­niz­er Ben­net Bedoukian

The gong play­ers were Ben­net Bedoukian, Melis­sa Bald­win, John Cli­men­hage, Jean-Paul Con­tois, Sylvie Dasne, Stephen Dish­er, Rob Fortin, Matt Gre­co, Joelle Levesque, Megan McAn­drew, Leigh Mac­don­ald, Susan New­man, Rick Sloukji, and Noah Ger­ard Vandelinde.