Margaret Leng Tan

Classical music, Musical Artist

1945 –

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Who is Margaret Leng Tan?

Margaret Leng Tan is a classical music artist known for her work as a professional toy pianist, performing in major cities around the world on her 51 cm-high toy pianos. She is also known to be a classical music performer using unconventional instruments like toy drums, soy sauce dishes, and cat-food cans.

She was born in Singapore on 12 December 1945, the daughter of former Straits Times Press chairman C. C. Tan, and started taking music lessons at the age of six. In 1961 the young Tan took first place in the Singapore-Malaysia annual piano competition, and won a scholarship to study at The Juilliard School at age 16 in the following year. In 1971 she became the first woman to earn a Doctorate in Musical Arts at Juilliard, and became the diva of the prepared piano, inserting nuts and bolts into the instrument and playing it inside out to rave reviews.

In 1981 Tan met John Cage, and since then they continued to work together for the last 11 years of his life. In 1984 she was awarded a US National Endowment for the Arts grant. Between 1990 and 1991 she gave retrospective concerts of Cage's music in collaboration with artist Jasper Johns. Since then she has since been hailed as "the leading exponent of Cage's music today" and "the most convincing interpreter of John Cage’s keyboard music". She performed Cage’s music throughout North America, Europe and Asia and in the PBS "American Masters" films on John Cage and Jasper Johns. The association with Cage also led to her enchantment with the toy piano. She made her debut on the instrument in 1993 at New York’s Lincoln Center, playing Cage's 1948 Suite for Toy Piano. Since finding this first toy piano, she continued to acquire many others, including a 37-key Schoenhut toy grand piano. She continues to, in her own words, "remain wholeheartedly intrigued by the toy piano's magical overtones, hypnotic charm, and not least, its off-key poignancy."

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Born
1945
Singapore
Also known as
  • Leng Tan, Margaret
Nationality
  • Singapore
Profession
Education
  • Juilliard School
Lived in
  • Brooklyn

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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