Dion Nataraja is a composer, vocalist, and scholar of contemporary music. Initially turned on to improvisatory jazz music, he is now a classically trained composer pursuing a prodigious academic career. He has accumulated a dense, complex and impactful compositional body of work, replete with cross-cultural collaboration at the intersection of areas such as spectral music, Javanese gamelan, improvisation, instrument building, algorithmic composition, posthumanism, postcolonial studies, and critical theories. As a member of Sandikala Ensemble, he has been exploring the possibilities of new parameters and configurations in Javanese music, including the expansion of its traditional tuning systems to a 36 microtonal scale (without octave repetition) conceived by Dion himself. With acute sensibility to the conflicts, ambiguities and political intricacies in music traditions, his work focuses on expanding contemporary Gamelan music and bridging cultural differences through his artistic practice.
Dionysius Arya Nataraja
