Sunday, July 22, 2018

Recording: Tatsuya Nakatani

Artist: Tatsuya Nakatani / Tatsuya Nakatani Gong Orchestra

Songs: [two excerpts] / [excerpt, in two parts]

Recorded at The Music Gallery @ 918 Bathurst, May 26, 2018.

Tatsuya Nakatani - [excerpt 1]

Tatsuya Nakatani - [excerpt 2]

Tatsuya Nakatani Gong Orchestra - [excerpt, part 1]

Tatsuya Nakatani Gong Orchestra - [excerpt, part 2]

The past couple years have seen a series of visits from master percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani, each of which has seen him welcomed by an increasing crowd of astonished admirers. It was therefore fitting for the Music Gallery to provide the resources to take things up to the next level and host a manifestation of Nakatani's Gong Orchestra. Providing the beautiful percussive hardware, Nakatani relies on local programmers to create an ensemble, which then spends the day together learning his vocabulary before performing for the public. The instructions specify that the musicians can be at different levels of experience (and, in fact, do not even need a background in percussion) so it's no surprise that the MG was able to use its many connections into many different scenes to come up with a diverse ensemble. Members included: Brenda Joy Lem, Katie Jensen, Debashis Sinha, Charlotte Cornfield, Rupert Ojiji Harvey, Kristyn Gelfand, HanHan, Alex Punzalan, W. A. Davison, Tréson Alman, Jenn Kitagawa, Bryan W. Bray, Laura C. Bates and Raphael Roter.

Before starting the concert with a captivating solo set, Nakatani reminded the crowd that this isn't so much a musical undertaking as a "vibration project" so that should be kept in mind in listening to these artifacts here — it's nowhere near as wonderful as feeling the vibrations live and in person, where the listener gets to lean in closer to hear the tiniest bowed overtones before being bowled over by mallet-clanging thunderstorms. That feeling of vibration-over-sound was even more intense with the ensemble playing together, while Nakatani conducted the group to create intense phasing and other effects across the length of the churchlike hall.

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