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Japanese gong orchestra to perform in West Kootenay

Performances will take place in Silverton and Kootenay Bay
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The Nakatani Gong Orchestra in performance. Photo submitted

Submitted

Percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani will bring his Nakatani Gong Orchestra (NGO) from Japan to British Columbia with five stops in August. The tour, which comes to Kootenay Bay on Aug. 16 and Silverton on Aug. 19, as well as Penticton, Vancouver and Whistler, is presented by the Powell Street Festival Society.

NGO is a touring experimental sound art project. A unique large ensemble project consisting of 14 of Nakatani’s adapted gongs played with his handmade bows, it is the only bowed gong orchestra in the world.

Collaborating with local communities, each stop offers a new set of players who have a technique workshop and practice with Nakatani before performing fresh to a live audience. Encompassing a wide range of different backgrounds and experience, each performance results in vastly different soundscapes. Through hundreds of performances, thousands of participants and audience members have been involved in creating these transformative art works.

The Kootenay Bay performance will take place in the newly constructed Temple of Light at Yasodhara Ashram. The temple was designed by Patkau Architects, an internationally acclaimed Canadian design firm. The acoustics in the new temple have been heralded in a recent article in Architectural Record. The performance starts at 7 p.m.

The Silverton performance will take place at the Silverton Gallery at 7:30 p.m.