The Nature of Music 19 Program Notes

John Luther Adams (b. 1953)

Nunataks (2007)

Lois V. Verk (b. 1951)

To Stare Astonished at the Sea (1994)

Somei Satoh (b. 1947)

And No Birds Sing (2021) (West Coast premiere)

Annie Gosfield (b. 1960)

Shattered Apparitions of the Western Wind (2013) Part III

Michael Wookey (b. 1983)

Coney Island Sous l’Eau (2013) (Coney Island under the Water) Solo toy piano version (2016)

Erik Griswold (b. 1969)

Paradise Lost (2021) (West Coast premiere)

John Cage (1912–1992)

0’00” (1962)

All notes by the composer unless otherwise stated.

Nunataks (2007) by John Luther Adams

Nunataks was commissioned by Music Northwest. Nunataks are mountains that rise up out of icefields and glaciers. The jagged contours of nunataks contrast sharply with the smooth whiteness that surrounds them. As the ice melts and the sea rises, these solitary peaks stand as stark reminders of human isolation and vulnerability.

To Stare Astonished at the Sea (1994) by Lois V Vierk

When it is calm, the ocean is gentle and inviting. It can be mysteriously majestic or humblingly powerful. Sometimes, it thrashes about frighteningly. The title was inspired by the W.B. Yeats poem, “Her Triumph.” To Stare Astonished at the Sea was commissioned for Margaret Leng Tan by Bary Goldberg on the occasion of Gayle Morgan’s birthday. Margaret asked me to compose a piece for her to be played entirely inside the piano on the strings. We developed the sound materials for the work based on Margaret’s expanded performance techniques. I composed the piece in three sections: It opens with a series of limpid glissandos in the mid-treble range that gradually gain momentum, culminating in a descending cascade that sets the tone for the next section. This begins percussively in the lower register, gradually adding tremolos and trills. The music moves to higher strings and develops tonally with strummed string phrases and dynamic glissandos. It ends with a flurry on the highest strings. Special thanks to Margaret Leng Tan for her creative contributions.

And No Birds Sing (2021) by Somei Satoh

In 2021, I asked Somei Satoh to write a requiem for the 10th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. And No Birds Sing presents a crystalline transparency of single tones and ninth chords suspended in time and space. It embodies the inherently Asian concept of the living essence of every tone. In this contemplative tribute of minimal means, I am reminded of Wiliam Blake, who so eloquently stated, “Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour.”
–Margaret Leng Tan

Shattered Apparitions of the Western Wind (2013) by Annie Gosfield

Shattered Apparitions of the Western Wind is an extended work for piano and electronics in four movements commissioned for Kathleen Supove’s Digital Debussy program. I imagined it as a hallucinatory duet with Claude Debussy that was further inspired by Hurricane Sandy. I had already chosen to use Debussy’s stormy prelude “What the West Wind Saw” (Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest) as a starting point for this piece, referencing Debussy’s untamed and imaginative interpretation of the destructive forces of nature when the Eastern Seaboard was hit by Hurricane Sandy. After experiencing the power of the storm firsthand, I used melodic and harmonic elements from the original prelude in small, untouched phrases alongside altered fragments that were seemingly twisted, distorted, and destroyed by the wind. The electronic backing track is made up entirely of the sounds of piano and wind: altered fragments of the original prelude are coupled with on-site recordings of Hurricane Sandy. Shattered Apparitions of the Western Wind was commissioned as part of a national series of works from New Music USA’s Commissioning Music/USA program.

Coney Island Sous l’Eau (2013/2016) by Michael Wookey

Coney Island Sous l’Eau was written after I saw the effects of Hurricane Sandy on the storied Brooklyn amusement park. An already mysterious place for me, I was shocked and saddened to see it so damaged. I set to work on a piece that would describe my feelings about Coney Island, its boisterous carnival atmosphere, and its subsequent engulfment. The bittersweet magic of Margaret Leng Tan’s toy pianos seemed the perfect choice of instrument to express my feelings. Coney Island Sous l’Eau (Coney Island Under the Sea) is the result. The concerto version of Coney Island Sous l’Eau was commissioned by Théâtre du Châtelet and was premiered in 2013 in Paris with Margaret Leng Tan as toy piano soloist with the Michael Wookey toy orchestra.

Paradise Lost (2021) by Erik Griswold

Paradise Lost, my personal reflection on the devastating Australian and California bushfires of 2019–20, was created especially for Margaret Leng Tans’ project, And No Birds Sing. During the period of these fires, Margaret and I were working regularly together on her one-woman show, Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep. I remember one day in Melbourne, walking to the theatre together through hellishly hot winds that felt like an oven under a weird reddish sky. I also remember working in Sydney one weekend when it was impossible to escape the choking smoke that blanketed the city. Closer to my Brisbane home, in the southern mountains of Queensland, I was scouting locations for an Outback performance when I found myself so close to a forest fire I had to evacuate. It was terrifying and awe-inspiring to watch the fire moving closer and closer on the Fire Services App and on the horizon. Those experiences served as stark reminders of the potent impacts of climate change. The tragic loss of wildlife, flora, habitat and the devastating impacts on people in fire-affected communities was overwhelming during the “Black Summer” of Australian fires. And in the opposite hemisphere, in my birth state of California (where all of my American family lives), there were ample reminders of the immense power of climate change to impact communities and ecosystems, including the twice fire-ravaged town of Paradise. As always when I am writing for Margaret, I am thinking of her dynamic physical presence at the piano and trying to create a vehicle for her to express her tremendous performative intensity.

0’00” (1962) by John Cage

0’00”

Solo to be performed in any way by anyone; for Yoko Ono and Toshi Ichiyanagi.

In a situation provided with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action.

With any interruptions.

Fulfilling in whole or part an obligation to others.

No two performances to be of the same action, nor may that action be the performance of a “musical” composition.

No attention to be given the situation (electronic, musical, theatrical)

–John Cage

0’00”, the performance piece subtitled 4’33” (No.2), was made for Yoko Ono and her husband, the composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, during the ‘60s heyday of the Fluxus conceptual art movement. Ono and Ichiyanagi were core members of the New York Fluxus community. Cage’s ideas exerted a profound influence on a movement that held in disdain the conventional notion of the dichotomy of art and life.
–Margaret Leng Tan

Margaret Leng Tan is one of the most iconic performers of new American music. Her practice goes beyond traditional boundaries of discipline and genre, embracing aspects of theater, choreography, and performance. Her daring and disciplinary rigor is inherited from her mentor of 11 years, John Cage. The New Yorker calls her the “diva of avant-garde pianism.” Renowned as a pre-eminent John Cage interpreter and for her performances that transcend the piano’s conventional boundaries, Tan was the featured performer in a tribute to Cage’s memory at the 45th Venice Biennale. Her Cage recordings are critically regarded as definitive performances, and she performs his music in the PBS American Masters films on John Cage and Jasper Johns. Tan was also one of George Crumb’s favorite performers for whom he composed Metamorphoses (Book I), a major piano cycle that Tan has performed to critical acclaim worldwide since 2017. 

The first woman to earn a doctorate from Juilliard, Margaret Leng Tan is recognized as the world’s first toy piano virtuoso. Her groundbreaking 1997 recording, The Art of the Toy Piano, transformed a humble toy into a real instrument. Tan has been called “the queen of the toy piano” (The New York Times) and “the toy piano’s Rubenstein” (The Independent, UK). The BBC, CNN, ABC (Australia), and National Public Radio (USA) have all profiled her career as a concert toy pianist. Tan’s curiosity has led her to other toy instruments and sounding objects, substantiating her credo: “Poor tools require better skills” (Marcel Duchamp). Major works written for her include Curios by Phylis Chen, a solo music-theater piece for toy instruments commissioned by the 2015 Singapore International Festival of Arts. Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep, a dramatic sonic portrait of the artist with music by Erik Griswold, is Tan’s fully-fledged foray into theater in collaboration with Chamber Made, Melbourne. In 2020, Dragon Ladies premiered in Arts Centre Melbourne at Asia TOPA, the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts that co- commissioned the work with Esplanade-Theaters on the Bay, where it received its Asian premiere in 2021. Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep won Work of the Year (Dramatic Category) in the 2021 Australian Art Music Awards. Tan’s iconoclastic practice has led to two feature documentaries: Evans Chan’s Sorceress of the New Piano and Chuang Xu’s Twinkle Dammit!, the latter winning Director for Best Feature Documentary at NÒT Film Festival and Best Foreign Language Documentary at Kadoma International Film Festival.

Margaret Leng Tan is a recipient of The National Endowment for the Arts’ Solo Recitalist Award. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by the State University of New York in 2011. In 2015 she received the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s highest artistic accolade. The Phillips Collection honored her in 2020 as a creator of innovative concert experiences.

Becoming Margaret Leng Tan (Marshall Cavendish International (Asia)), a 2023 children’s storybook by Lai Low and illustrated by Dan Kuah, has been acquired by Kokila Imprint (Penguin Random House). In 2025 Margaret Leng Tan will be featured in SG60 exhibitions at Esplanade – Theaters on the Bay and the National Museum Singapore, celebrating the 60th anniversary of Singapore’s independence.