TATSUYA NAKATANI (Percussion)

"Tatsuya Nakatani is a creative artist originally from Osaka, Japan who now resides in Easton, PA. Nakatani has released over sixty recordings has performed countless solo percussion concerts through extensive touring. He has collaborated with hundreds of other artists internationally and presented masterclasses, workshops and lectures across the USA and around the world.

Nakatani's approach to music is visceral, non-linear and intuitively primitive, expressing an unusually strong spirit while avoiding any categorization. He creates sound via both traditional and extended percussion techniques, utilizing drums, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects and bells, as well as various sticks, kitchen tools and homemade bows, all of which manifest in an intense and organic music that represents a very personal sonic world. His approach is steeped in the sensibilities of free improvisation, experimental music, jazz, rock, and noise, and yet retains the sense of space and quiet beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music. His percussion instruments can imitate the sounds of a trumpet, a stringed instrument or an electronic device to the extent that it becomes difficult to recognize the source of the sound. He has devoted himself to a musical aesthetic where rhythm gives way to pulse, often in a way that is not always audible or visible, in currents that incorporate silence and texture. Nakatani's primary music activities include solo percussion performance, N.G.O. (Nakatani Gong Orchestra) and collaborations with musicians and dancers both in live performance and recordings. His constant touring fosters the raw and fresh quality in his music, which can only survive through an open willingness to share energy, culture, music and self on a global human scale.

Nakatani has performed worldwide, from international music festivals to local community centers, artist lofts to university concert halls, including a recent performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He values and appreciates grass- roots organized shows set up and promoted by local musicians and promoters in all types of settings. Nakatani also heads his own H&H Production, Nakatani-Kobo an independent record label and private recording studio based in Easton, Pennsylvania."-Tatsuya Nakatani website