Yvonne Tan
Margaret Leng Tan
MARGARET LENG TAN has established herself as a major force within the American avant-garde; a highly visible, talented and visionary pianist whose work sidesteps perceived artificial boundaries within the usual concert experience and creates a new level of communication with listeners.
Embracing aspects of theatre, choreography, performance and even “props” such as the teapot she “plays” in Alvin Lucier’s Nothing is Real, Tan has brought to the avant-garde, a measure of good old-fashioned showmanship tempered with a disciplinary rigour inherited from her mentor John Cage. This has won Tan acceptance far beyond the norm for performers of avant-garde music, as she is regularly featured at international festivals, records often for adventurous labels such as Mode and New Albion and has appeared on American Public Television, at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.
Born in Singapore, Tan was the first woman to earn a doctorate from Juilliard, but youthful restlessness and a desire to explore the crosscurrents between Asian music and that of the West led her to John Cage. This sparked an active collaboration between Cage and Tan that lasted from 1981 to his death, during which Tan gained recognition as one of the pre-eminent interpreters of Cage’s music.
In 1997 her groundbreaking CD, The Art of the Toy Piano on Point Music/Universal Classics elevated the lowly toy piano to the status of a “real” instrument. Tan is certainly the world’s first professional toy piano virtuoso. Since then her curiosity has extended to other toy instruments as well, substantiating her credo “Poor tools require better skills” (Marcel Duchamp).
Tan favours music that confronts and defies the established boundaries of the piano and has collaborated with like-minded composers to create works for her, such as Somei Satoh, Tan Dun, Michael Nyman, Julia Wolfe, Toby Twining and Ge Gan-ru; she is also a favourite of composer George Crumb. Tan is the subject of a feature documentary by filmmaker Evans Chan, Sorceress of the New Piano: The Artistry of Margaret Leng Tan, which has been screened at numerous international film festivals.
In 2015, the Singapore International Festival of Arts commissioned Curios, a multimedia theatre work from Phyllis Chen for Tan, who was also awarded the Cultural Medallion – Singapore’s highest artistic accolade – in the same year. More recently, she has premiered George Crumb’s new work Metamorphoses, Book II, written specially for her, and has starred in her solo theatre production Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep that received its world premiere in 2020.
Reviews
…the queen of the toy piano.
~The New York Times
The avant-garde hasn’t had a performer like Margaret Leng Tan in years. She’s one of those rare pianists whose performance style takes equal billing with the music….[she is ] the world’s premiere string piano virtuoso.”
~The Village Voice
Tan is the toy piano’s Rubenstein, coaxing an immensity of feeling from a limited tonal range.
~The Independent, UK
Margaret Leng Tan is a keyboard virtuoso like no other…she makes it [the toy piano] into an astonishing musical vehicle…with her customary flair she turned toys into art.
~San Francisco Chronicle
Performance History
DRAGON LADIES DON”T WEEP
1-4 April 2021
Esplanade-Theatres by the Bay
Singapore
28 March 2020
Asia Triennial of Performing Arts
Playhouse Theatre
Arts Centre Melbourne
METAMORPHOSES, BOOK 1
by George Crumb
24 October 2019
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music
MINIATURE MEETS MONUMENTAL
30 August 2019
City Recital Centre
Sydney
23 August 2019
Melbourne Recital Centre
TOI! TOI! TOI! A CELEBRATION OF TOYS IN MUSIC
With Resound Collective
14 September 2018
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music
Singapore
Videos
Margaret Leng Tan by International Piano Archives, University of Maryland
“The Toy Piano Virtuoso” by Great Big Story