"Recording of June 13th, 2017 concert of the Nakatani Gong Orchestra organized by Kevin Cain at Vault Arthouse Productions, held in the Marine A Grain Elevator at Silo City in Buffalo, New York"-liner notes

"NGO, Nakatani Gong Orchestra, is a contemporary live Sound Art project that tours throughout North and Central America. NGO is a continuous, growing community engagement project; and the only bowing Gong orchestra in existence in the world today. The rich harmonies produced from multiple layers of bowed gongs are transformative, engaging and inspiring for both players and audiences. The gong bows and surrounding instrumentation equipment are handmade by Nakatani Kobo. For each performance, participating gong players are selected by a local presenter. Nakatani gives a specialized training workshop to gong players in preparation for the performance. Players will also experience NakataniÕs own unique point of view regarding Gong techniques, and will experience undiscovered dimensions while immersed in the vibrations and sounds during a training workshop. Nakatani is the composer and conductor for the evening of the performance.

Nakatani began germinating ideas for N.G.O. in early 2002, and finally took the project on the road in April 2011. Since then he has performed over 100 concerts with N.G.O. internationally. Notable venues include John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., MOCA Cleveland, OH, Tigertail Productions presented at Miami Dade County Auditorium in FL, Bemis Contemporary Art Center in Omaha NE, Columbia Museum of Art in SC, The Issue Project Room in New York City, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. N.G.O. has been a visiting artist conducting workshops at a number of universities; including the University of Illinois, Smith College, Ohio State University and Wesleyan. Taiga Records (Minneapolis, MN) released an LP entitled ÒNakatani Gong OrchestraÓ in 2012.

Audience members have described a NGO performance as entirely unlike anything they have ever experienced before, often relating feelings of cleansing or a sort of purification after the event.

Tatsuya Nakatani (b.1970 Osaka, Japan) is a sound artist and percussionist. He has released over sixty recordings in North America and Europe. Residing in the USA since 1994, he has performed countless solo percussion concerts and has collaborated with hundreds of artists in international music festivals, university concert halls, art museums and galleries. His latest project is the Nakatani Gong Orchestra, which builds community ensembles performing on multiple bowed gongs under his direction He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. Utilizing drums, gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, wooden sticks, metal objects, and the bows and mallets he handcrafts in his Kobo; he creates an intense, intuitively primitive, expressive music of unusually strong spirit that defies genre. His work references improvisedexperimental music, free jazz, and noise, while still retaining the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music."