SINGAPORE: Margaret Leng Tan has performed at some of the finest concert halls and at festivals around the world. She has also made playing on toy pianos an art in its own right. But the Singaporean experimental pianist and performer revealed she still has one secret desire.
“More than anything, I want to be, not a stand-up comic, but a sit-down comic,” she quipped. “And because I use the toy piano, I can be in a position to be funny!”
The 71-year-old Tan’s whimsical sense of humour was evident during her concert in Singapore two years ago. Cabinet Of Curiosities, which was performed at the Singapore International Festival of Arts in 2015, saw her wearing masks and playing an assortment of toy instruments, including her trademark toy pianos. That same year, she was bestowed Singapore’s Cultural Medallion award.
Her latest show, however, will be a tad more serious – for a Margaret Leng Tan concert, that is.
The Brooklyn-based musician is back in town for a one-night only concert on Friday (Jan 20) at the National Museum of Singapore. Titled SATIEfaction, the multimedia show is a tribute to the late French avant garde composer Erik Satie. Tan will be performing on her toy pianos as well as a regular grand piano pieces by Satie and other modern composers such as the late John Cage. The show will also include video elements and readings.
Margaret Leng Tan put the toy piano on the musical map in the 1990s. (Photo: Jim Standard)
CAGE SETS HER FREE
The show will be one of two events that Tan will be doing in conjunction with the museum’s ongoing exhibition What Is Not Visible Is Not Invisible. Next month, she will be holding a free workshop on Feb 4, on the legacy of Cage, who was her mentor for 11 years until his death in 1992. In fact, you might remember Tan performing Cage’s famous 4’33” piece on a toy piano under a void deck in Singaporean filmmaker Tan Pin Pin’s documentary Singapore GaGa.
It’s no wonder then that it was a music piece by Cage that set her on the path to becoming the Queen of the Toy Piano, as she has been nicknamed.
“I never had a toy piano when I was a child and I’m just making up for that lost opportunity,” she joked.
Tan had already been an accomplished musician, even prior to her collaborations with Cage. But what opened her ears to the unique instrument was performing Cage’s Suite For Toy Piano piece, on a US$45 toy piano she bought at a thrift shop.
“I wouldn’t be playing the toy piano now if it weren’t for my great mentor,” she told Channel NewsAsia. “Sadly, I learned it after he died and I played it at a memorial tribute I made for him at the Lincoln Centre (in 1993). I realised just what an amazing piece he had made out of just nine white notes, and by the time I was done with that, I thought my goodness, this little instrument has the potential to become a real instrument and not just a toy.”
For Tan, playing the toy piano opened new vistas. “There are no rules to be broken and the sky was the limit,” she said, adding that it had slowly led to her leaning towards a more theatrical way of performing in recent years, such as what was seen in Cabinet Of Curiosities.
“Theatre is more and more the direction I’m going to. There’s a sense of being able to fully express myself,” she said.
Tan in the whimsical Cabinet Of Curiosities at the Singapore International Festival Of Arts 2015. (Photo: Kong Chong Yew)
SOMETHING TO CROW ABOUT
For Tan, 2016 had been an “annus horribilis” or year of misfortune. Not only did her favourite dog pass away, an airline also lost a crate full of the instruments and props she had used for Cabinet Of Curiosities, which is still currently touring.
“I lost half of my masks, invented instruments and two of my toy pianos, and I have been on a quest to replace these, which is no small task,” she said. (Her bad luck with airlines had apparently followed her to Singapore, when the flight she was on temporarily misplaced the grand toy piano she was going to use for her concert.)
But it didn’t turned out to be a completely bad year – Tan revealed that yet another pillar of avant garde music, George Crumb, has been composing a new piano cycle especially for her.
It’s called Metamorphoses and will comprise pieces based on 10 famous paintings by the likes of Marc Chagall and Vincent Van Gogh.
Tan has been in close touch with the 87-year-old composer for the piano cycle and described it as being “in the middle of a very historic experience”. Plus, she added, parts of it will definitely indulge her more theatrical side. One of the painting inspirations for Metamorphoses is Van Gogh’s Wheatfield With Crows and at some point, she added with a mischievous smile, “I get to caw like a crow!”
