Margaret Leng Tan: "The Art of the Toy Piano"— February 21, 2003

Margaret Leng Tan, known as the "Diva of the Avant Garde" performed her wonderfully entertaining program "Ode to Schroeder: The Art of the Toy Piano" in a concert presented by Santa Fe New Music on Friday, February 21, 2003 at 8:00 pm at the James A. Little Theater in Santa Fe. The program repeated Saturday, February 22, at the Outpost Performance Space in Albuquerque, also at 8:00 pm.

None other than Schroeder's creator, the late Charles M. Schulz, has praised Leng Tan for her virtuosic performance. "I am very flattered that you have joined Schroeder as one of the great toy piano performers of all time," he once wrote her.

Margaret Leng Tan is an internationally celebrated artist renowned for her performances of American and Asian music that transcend the piano's conventional boundaries. She has progressively perfected an individual style integrating sound, choreography and theater which has inspired many composers to create performer-specific works for her including John Cage, Tan Dun, Alvin Lucier, Somei Satoh, Toby Twining, Aaron Jay Kernis and Julia Wolfe.

The world's only professional toy pianist, Margaret Leng Tan has transformed a toy into a legitimate instrument inspiring composers to create an adventurous new repertoire for her toy pianos and toy instruments. Ms. Tan and her diminutive instruments present a music-theater of nostalgia and exuberance at festivals around the world, and she has appeared alongside a litany of today's most hailed artists in classical music. Later this year, Margaret Leng Tan will premiere Pulitzer prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis' toy piano concerto with the Singapore Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra as well as the chamber version commissioned by National Public Radio station, WNYC.

Also recognized as one of the leading interpreters of John Cage's music, Leng Tan spent 2002, the tenth anniversary of Cage's death, honoring her long-time mentor with commemorative tributes at festivals worldwide. In April 2002, Ms. Tan made her Carnegie Hall debut performing "Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra" with the American Composers Orchestra, adding to a roster of concert appearances that have included the Berliner Festspiele, Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, Singapore Arts Festival, Ravinia, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors and Serious Fun Festivals, BAM's Next Wave Festival, Bang on A Can, and many others.

The first woman to graduate with a doctorate from The Juilliard School, Leng Tan is a recipient of The National Endowment for the Arts' Solo Recitalist Award. Her groundbreaking album, "The Art of the Toy Piano" (Point Music/Universal), has received widespread national and international critical acclaim. A native of Singapore, she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her four dogs, three Steinways and, at last count, fifteen toy pianos.

"We are proud and honored to present Margaret Leng Tan, a longtime friend and associate, to audiences in Santa Fe and for the first time for SFNM, Albuquerque as well," said Santa Fe New Music Artistic Director, John Kennedy. "She is such an accomplished and charismatic musician that we are confident this concert will chase away the winter doldrums, and further demonstrate to the arts-loving public how compelling, exciting, and encompassing of a wide spectrum of influences new music is today."

Also on the program, Santa Fe New Music Artistic Director John Kennedy performed Music for the Five and Dime, by 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Henry Brant, and To the Earth, by Frederic Rzewski, for flowerpots and voice. The full program comprised:

Program Notes

Written for Merce Cunningham's dance, Diversion, the Suite For Toy Piano is the first-ever bona-fide composition created for the toy instrument. Its five short movements use only nine consecutive white notes and can ostensibly be performed on any toy piano, perhaps even one with painted black keys. One of the most charming and whimsical of Cage's compositions, the Suite is filled with Cagean irony and humor as in the exaggerated dynamic extremes from sffz to ppp. As if a toy piano could have such capabilities! Nevertheless, the pianist tries his best and from the effort subtle differences emerge.

Eleanor Rigby – Lennon/McCartney. Toby Twining created the toy version of Eleanor Rigby at my request as I thought this popular Beatles song would be a potent evocation of 60's nostalgia when heard emanating from a toy piano.

Mirabella (A Tarantella) – Stephen Montague. Montague's toy Tarantella has all the hallmarks of the dance reputedly created to exorcise the sting of the Tarantula: great rapidity, perpetual motion and the use of 6/8 time. Designed to show off the virtuosic capabilities of my newly-acquired Schoenhut toy grand piano, Montague wrote Mirabella sight unseen (sound heard over the telephone), and with strict admonitions not to exceed its three-octave compass. American-born and educated, Stephen Montague has lived in Britain since 1974 and is renowned for his pioneering works combining live instruments with live electronics.

She Herself Alone – Laura Liben . The first section of She Herself Alone was originally written for toy piano and psaltery as incidental music for a play, Who She is Herself, performed at the KO Festival of Performance in Amherst, Mass, in 1996. Composer Laura Liben writes: "When I heard Margaret play the toy piano I thought of her perhaps playing this piece but it was five years before the tape could be located and there was no written music. Margaret asked me to add more material, to 'finish the piece' as it were, and that's how She Herself Alone for toy piano and toy psaltery came about." Laura Liben currently composes and performs with the new music percussion ensemble, Gamelan Son of Lion. One of her works is on their recent album, Bending the Gending.

Nothing is Real (Strawberry Fields Forever) – Alvin Lucier. One of the world's foremost pioneers of electro-acoustic music, Alvin Lucier created Nothing is Real for the pianist Aki Takahashi's Hyper Beatles album series. Scored for piano, teapot and miniature sound system, the pianist first records herself playing the melody of the Beatles song, Strawberry Fields Forever. The recording is then played back through a speaker hidden in a teapot. During playback the ensuing resonances are manipulated by opening and closing the teapot lid.

Musiques Nocturnes from Out Of Doors – Béla Bartók . The "Nocturnal Music" movement is an uncanny anticipation of Minimalism and ambient music. Since the piece is, for the most part, made up of repeated motivic fragments above an ostinato, I had little difficulty extracting a toy piano version from the original piano score. In "orchestrating" the piece, I have taken the liberty of complementing Bartok's evocative sounds of the night with ambient effects drawn from my toy arsenal supplemented by John Kennedy's percussion resources.

Berceuse (Lullaby) – Hans Otte. Berceuse is from Stundenbuch, an anthology of 48 piano miniatures by the German composer, Hans Otte. He sent it to me thinking it would lend itself to the toy piano. I have since adapted several others in the collection as well.

The Animist Child – Jerome Kitzke. Jerome Kitzke's music draws on American Indian influences and is often visceral and ritualistic. In his words, The Animist Child is a stomp on the earth for the beginning of life, a baby born who instinctively embraces the soul inherent in all things." Kitzke writes for and often performs with his New York-based group, The Mad Coyote.

Modern Love Waltz – Philip Glass. For my new-found instrument, I thought Glass' Modern Love Waltz, with its limited range and naive music-box-like figurations, would be an ideal candidate for the toy piano. Happily it has turned out to be one of my most successful transcriptions and lends credence to my conviction that certain pieces were meant to be heard on the toy piano!

Sweet Chinoiserie – Guy Klucevsek. Renowned accordionist/composer Guy Klucevsek adapted the toy instrumental suite, Sweet Chinoiserie, for me from his Chinoiserie, a music/theater collaboration with Ping Chong and Company. Sonically and visually it is the most colorful work in my toy repertory, enlisting a battalion of toy and kitchen percussion and other toy instruments such as the melodica and of course, the toy accordion. The title of the suite's third movement, The Mark of a Hero, derives from the brand name of my toy accordion.

Star Spangled Etude #3 ("Furling Banner") – Raphael Mostel. Raphael Mostel is best known for his Tibetan Singing Bowl Ensemble and his chamber narrative, The Travels of Babar. The toy piano, however, inspired this flag-waver in celebration of the great American tradition of freedom (with apologies to Jasper Johns).

— Margaret Leng Tan

The Winged Energy of Delight is a little suite of four pieces celebrating the mastery of patterns with four qualities of childhood: exuberance, reflective reverie, joy, and sweet slumber. The last movement, "Lullaby," calls for the performer to play toy piano with the left hand and rub a sandblock with the right. The title comes from a poem by Rilke:

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abyssess,
now beyond your own life
build the great arch of unimagined bridges.

Frederic Rzewski is an American composer presently living in Belgium, whose music is often focused on political and social issues. He is best known for his epic piano solo, The People United Will Never Be Defeated, a set of variations on a Chilean protest song, "El Pueblo Unido/Jamas Sera Vencido."

To the Earth is scored for one musician, playing four flower pots, who recites the following text based on a Homeric hymn:

To the Earth, Mother of all, I will sing the well-established, the oldest, who nourishes on her surface everything that lives.
Those things that walk upon the holy ground and those that swim in the sea and those that fly, all these are nourished by your abundance.
It is thanks to you if we humans have healthy children and rich harvests.
Great Earth, you have the power to give life to and to take it away from creatures that must die.
Happy are the ones whom you honor with your kindness and gifts; what they have built will not vanish.
Their fields are fertile, their herds prosper, and their houses are full of good things.
Their cities are governed with just laws, their woman are beautiful; good fortune and wealth follow them.
Their children are radiant with the joy of youth, the young women play in the flowery meadows, dancing with happiness in their hearts
Holy Earth, undying spirit, so it is with those whom you honor.
Hail to you, Mother of life, you who are loved by the starry sky; be generous and give me a happy life in return for my song so that I can continue to praise you with my music.

Henry Brant was born in 1913 and is still an active composer. The winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Brant has been a pioneer in composing spatial music, in which performers are situated around and amidst the audience. Music for a Five and Dime is one of his first compositions and exists in at least four versions, perhaps suggesting he used it as a student. At the time he composed it, in 1932, he was in New York and perhaps influenced by the circle of composers around Henry Cowell, including William Russell, who was also composing many jazz-tinged works for kitchen hardware and other found objects.

— John Kennedy, Artistic Director, Santa Fe New Music