Tatsuya Nakatani, an Osaka-born and Pennsylvania-based percussionist, played a solo set consisting of a long, uninterrupted piece improvised on a mostly home-made set-up of gongs and cymbals, a small drumset, and a variety of bows, wooden and metal sticks, scrapers and brushes at Eugene, Oregon’s Harmony Roadhouse Studios on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010.  The solo set was followed by a quartet with able collaborators Andrew Rowan on cornet, Hashem Assadullahi on saxophone, and Bill Marsh on guitar. 

The first thing one notices about Nakatani’s performance is the physicality of it. While playing, Nakatani is in constant motion. Every movement of playing his instruments, from the striking of drums to the drawing of a bow across the edge of a cymbal is fluid and effortless.  While he plays one instrument he eventually leans to the floor to put any of several smaller instruments on top of his drum heads in order to move to new sounds.  Nakatani often moves from one range of instruments to another, metals to woods, or cymbals to drums, sometimes slowly and sometimes in rapid succession.  Often the sound of throwing an instrument onto the floor, or onto a pile of cymbals is a part of the music.  A listener is captivated by the sheer energy. 

While the visual aspect of the performance is important,  the depth of the music goes far beyond just the  physical production of sound,  the motions of the performance  and the content of the music are intimately connected.  Nakatani’s solo set opened with an extended section of bowed gong in which he conjured an impressive variety of sounds from the cymbal ranging from painfully loud high frequencies all the way down to a rich, complex bass. Nakatani could have kept the whole audience in a trance with just this one instrument, but he began to switch instruments, and the rest of the piece was dominated by a succession of new colors, timbres and densities. Just like the man, the music is in constant motion and undergoing constant change. 

With this kind of progression and especially with a solo improvisor, one gets the feeling of watching the performer’s  inner conversation, a process of watching thoughts unfold through music.  Nakatani sometimes picks up an instrument and drops it right where he found it to move on to another, or brings up an instrument from his stockpile on the floor and throws it back down again after playing just one note on it. The quick but unhurried way that Nakatani does this communicates only a sense of curiosity and an excitement for exploration, rather than indecision or mere impatience. The listener feels that he can see the thoughts developing as the music progresses.  Through this kind of visual thought process, the performer can offer to the listener an intimate view into his thinking, and this was a strength of Nakatani’s set.

In this kind of improvised music, where the rules are made up as one goes along, it is often a performer’s orchestration of pace and affect that makes or breaks an improvisation. Tatsuya Nakatani is a master of his own brand of this kind of orchestration, offering a serene, child-like interest in the sounds he creates. Every movement and every sound from this seasoned performer is completely authentic, completely natural and completely captivating.   

Nakatani is part way through a long solo tour of the United States, and I highly recommend seeing him play.  Visit Nakatani’s website for more information.