⫸ Margaret Leng Tan, Queen of the Toy Piano Salutes John M. Armleder

Margaret Leng Tan has created TOY TOY TOY!, a diminutive music-theater of nostalgia and humor performed on toy piano and all manner of toy instruments - from bicycle bells to a hand-cranked music box. Who would have thought toys had such potential? Leng Tan treats them as real instruments in accordance with dadaist Marcel Duchamp’s belief that “poor tools require better skills.” She also does justice to her mentor John Cage's long-standing conviction that one can make music with any object capable of producing sound. 
Margaret Leng Tan is one of the most highly regarded performers in American experimental music. Her work embraces theater, choreography, performance. She is renowned as a pre-eminent John Cage interpreter and performer of American and Asian music transcending the piano’s conventional boundaries. Leng Tan has been hailed as “the queen of the toy piano” by The New York Times. Her 1997 groundbreaking recording, The Art of the Toy Piano (Point/Universal), transformed a humble toy into a serious instrument making her the world’s first toy piano virtuoso.  

⋰ In collaboration with Museion

©Jim Standard