Tatsuya Nakatani & Crowmeat Bob plus Ginger Wagg & David Landes

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

Crowmeat Bob is self- and friend-taught on guitar and reeds, composes for many different kinds of ensembles, and plays in many bands and in improvised or otherwise situations with hundreds of musicians over the years. Most importantly, he provided sax for the John Goodman man-scaping scene in “Righteous Gemstones”.

Tatsuya and Bob have played together many times since the late aughts.

Also on the bill are Ginger Wagg of the performance art collective Wild Actions & drummer David Landes .

“As a movement-based improviser and collaborator, I am always intrigued and nourished when I find those moments of attractive yet unfamiliar places, especially when they resonate deeply with some sort of yes. Perhaps it’s an agreement with myself or one other person or many people at once, but that yes is what I strive for. Nothing can be repeated exactly the same way twice but a similar feeling can be found over and over, and that can happen in endless ways. I’m not looking for comfort in knowing what’s coming next – discovery can be odd, messy or uneasy at times. But finding some sort of mutual understanding, even fleeting, makes it worth the risk. Risk is a thing that’s often avoided, especially right now. But what happens and what’s gained if we remove barriers to get to what’s available right in front of us, even if it’s a dangerous move?”
–Ginger Wagg

Doors 7:30 pm, show 8 pm. $10 suggested donation for artists. BYO or sample what’s on hand.