ECSTATIC MUSIC FESTIVAL - Thursday, April 26, 2018 | 7:30pm
ECSTATIC MUSIC FESTIVAL: MARGARET LENG TAN PREMIERES GEORGE CRUMB, SUZANNE FARRIN & KELLY MORAN
A New Sounds Live co-presentation hosted by John Schaefer & streamed live on NewSounds.org
This concert embodies the bountiful extended potential of the piano – the now “classic avant-garde” prepared piano of John Cage; George Crumb, the venerable master still discovering new means of expression within his inimitable style; and Kelly Moran’s latest contribution to the prepared piano repertoire alongside Suzanne Farrin’s bold forays into new sonic territory. All this channeled through Margaret Leng Tan, hailed by the Washington Post as “the formidable doyenne of the avant-garde piano who has built a career on upending tradition, pushing her instrument into fresh, no-holds-barred sonic worlds.”
Tan gives the New York premiere of Metamorphoses, a major new work written for her by the seminal 20th century composer George Crumb, for amplified piano, toy piano, percussion and voice. Metamorphoses is performed with Monica Duncan’s video projections, in which atmospheric visual textures complement the music. Tan will also premiere two new EMF-commissioned pieces by young composers responding to Cage and Crumb’s influence: a work for prepared piano by Kelly Moran, and a haunting new piece by 2017 Rome Prize winner Suzanne Farrin that acknowledges not only Crumb’s important contribution to American music, but, in Farrin’s words, “also Margaret Leng Tan’s special role as the artist who has brought the piano’s insides to life on stage.” Works by Toby Twining and John Cage round out the program.
At this concert, Kaufman Music Center will host Mode Records’ CD launch of Metamorphoses (Book l), a live recording made from Margaret Leng Tan’s performance at the Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany) in October 2017.
Curator's Note from Judd Greenstein
It’s exciting to be premiering a piece by George Crumb, one of the seminal composers of the 20th century, and to see how young composers respond to his work. His music has been an underrated influence on multiple generations of creative musicians, cutting across the classical/non-classical spectrum. And it’s a great honor to have Margaret Leng Tan, a very influential and important interpreter of contemporary and toy piano music, as a voice on this program.
Doors open at 6:45 pm.