Dion Nataraja

Dion Nataraja is an Indonesian composer and researcher and a PhD candidate in Music Composition at the University of California, Berkeley. His artistic practice and research bring together Javanese gamelan, spectral music, the creation of new instruments and tuning systems, and electroacoustic music.

In 2020, Dion founded Sandikala Ensemble with Yustiawan Paradigma Umar. Based in Yogyakarta, the ensemble develops new gamelan instruments and tuning systems, as well as contemporary approaches to karawitan practice. Dion is currently focused on further developing these instruments, including creating twelve new tuning groups.

Dion studied composition with Ken Ueno, Edmund Campion, Carmine-Emanuele Cella, Steve Lehman, Nicholas Brooke, and Allen Shawn, and participated in masterclasses with Toshio Hosokawa and Chinary Ung. He also studied Javanese gamelan with Midiyanto. His works have been presented in Indonesia, the United States, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, and South Korea. His collaborators and performers include Yarn/Wire, line upon line percussion, Del Sol Quartet, Kyu-Soo Lim, Peni Candra Rini, Sri Hanuraga, and Gerald Situmorang. Other projects include music for To Future Listeners: Migrating Sounds, an immersive sound installation by YoungEun Kim commissioned by the National Asian Culture Center for ACC Future Prize 2026, and Cenotaph, a work for gamelan ensemble supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. His works have been performed at MATA Festival, Fête de la Musique Berlin, ArtJog, Pestapora, Soundbridge Festival, and Komunitas Salihara.

As a researcher, Dion has published in Contemporary Music Review and Jurnal Kajian Seni. He has also presented his work and research at Stanford University, AAS-in-Asia, Louisiana State University, the California Institute of the Arts, and various forums in Indonesia. Dion is the recipient of the 2026 Ladd Prize and the 2023 De Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition, a 2022 OneBeat Fellow, and a finalist in the 2020 Talea Ensemble Emerging Composer Competition.