SORCERESS OF THE NEW PIANO

US Premiere

USA/Singapore/Hong Kong 2004 | 90mins | Video Color

In person: Director Evans Chan and subject Margaret Leng Tan

With a special performance by Margaret Leng Tan before the screening

Hailed by The New Yorker as "the diva of avant-garde pianism," Singapore-born, New York-based artist Margaret Leng Tan is one of the most important figures in contemporary music. Tan's life and contributions—and her famous toy pianos— take center stage in SORCERESS OF THE NEW PIANO, an engrossing new documentary that invites the viewer to literally get inside the piano and discover the sublime sonic universe conjured by this musical force of nature. Through remarkably candid interviews with Tan, music critics and composers, and with extensive footage of Tan's riveting performances and the experimentations that culminated in her becoming the world's first professional toy pianist (with a nod to Schroeder from Peanuts fame), filmmaker Evans Chan records a woman with an irrepressible enthusiasm for pushing the boundaries of sound. Though her musical lineage is traced back to such American pioneers as Henry Cowell, George Crumb and longtime mentor John Cage, it is Tan who breathes life into the philosophical legacy of those composers, channeling their aesthetic provocations into accessible interpretations while continually investigating the East-West cultural instersection. Equally fascinating for avant-garde music buffs and those with no knowledge of the genre, SORCERESS OF THE NEW PIANO is the rare film that enables us to hear music in the sounds where we least expect it.

—Taro Goto