Singapore International Festival of Arts
CLANGOR!
DIMINUTIVE MUSIC THEATRE OF NOSTALGIA AND HUMOUR
Clangor! is a diminutive music-theatre of nostalgia and humor performed exclusively on toy pianos and all manner of toy instruments, from bicycle bells to a hand-cranked music box. Who would have thought toys had such potential?
Margaret treats them as real instruments, in keeping with the French avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp’s statement, “poor tools require better skills.” She also fulfills her mentor John Cage’s long-standing conviction that one can make music on just about any object capable of producing sound, whether it be the tin can used in Ying-an Lin’s Drunkard’s Dance, the jack–in-the-box featured in James Joslin’s Für Enola, or the toy hammer and rattle in Twinkle Dammit! by David Wolfson.
Suitable for ages 8 – 108!
Programme
Approximately 60 minutes without intermission
FANFARE from *THE WINGED ENERGY OF DELIGHT (1997) by John Kennedy (b.1959)
Toy cymbals
DRUNKARD’S DANCE (2013) by Ying-an Lin (b.1993)
Toy piano and tin can
CAROUSEL (2009) and *COBWEBBED CAROUSEL (2010) by Phyllis Chen (b.1978)
Toy piano and hand-cranked music box; video by Rob Dietz
FÜR ENOLA (2011) by James Joslin (b.1987)
Toy piano, jack-in-the-box and spinning top
TWINKLE, DAMMIT! (2011) by David Wolfson (b.1964)
Toy piano, toy hammer, rattle; dramatization by Margaret Leng Tan
*CLANGOR (2013) by Monica Pearce (b.1984)
A lament for toy piano and bicycle bells
*TOY SYMPHONY (2013) by Jorge Torres Sáenz (b.1968)
i. Prelude
ii. Sticks’ Tics
iii. Tête-à-tête
iv. Night Music
v. Finale: Leng Tan Toyccatina
Toy piano, toy instruments and toys
MINUTE RING (2006) by Jed Distler (b.1956)
Toy piano
(With apologies to R. Wagner)
*Written for Margaret Leng Tan
Reviews
Phyllis Chen’s Carousel (2009) and Cobwebbed Carousel (2010) was a hypnotically beautiful diptych. These were produced by an accompanying hand-cranked music box which played a perforated paper roll and was later inverted to produce a different sequence of notes for the second piece. Simple yet beguilingly effective.
The Straits Times