Chroma

I have been working long hours for a new multimedia piece that Rob and I are planning to premiere in September. I think this is one of my most adventuresome pieces up to date. The piece’s working title is “Chroma.”
Chroma:chro·ma
1. the purity of a color, or its freedom from white or gray.
2. intensity of distinctive hue; saturation of a color

Without giving away too much, I’ve been creating a garment for this particular piece. It is not made of fabric or anything most people would think of as clothing material. The material is used rather extensively in the video as well. I have been obsessing over it, working on it non-stop for 2 days. I’ve been known to be a sewing fanatic. However in this particular case, no needles or thread! Stay tuned for more performance details!

Toy piano spotted!

Rob and I went to see Laurie Anderson’s new piece, “Homeland” at the Rose Theater. It was great to see what she is doing these days. I was moved by the sincerity of her songs and loved her quirky ways of storytelling. There were a couple of parts where she put an electronic effect on her microphone and her voice was transformed into a deep male voice. Pretty hilarious. She would talk about politics in a light manner at these moments. She had some great transitions. One of them, she was wearing a pair of white sunglasses with a small microphone attached to it. She was hitting her head side to side and biting her teeth together. The mic could pick up these sounds and it created a really booming rhythmic line.

On our way back to the train we passed by a piano shop and saw three toy pianos in their window. One of them looked like such a gem! It was an antique Winton. (I’ve actually never even heard of that brand.) It is an upright and you can look into the piano because there isn’t a front board on the instrument. It looked like they were felt hammers instead of metal hammers. My fingers were itching! The legs of the instrument were ornate and curved. ‘m returning on Monday to try it out.

Spare a nickel?

Many people have asked me if I have ever busked as a toy pianist. My only real attempt at busking took place on Queens Street in Toronto over five years ago. At that time, I was performing a lot more solo toy piano pieces. I was also prepared to play some transcriptions of Scott Joplin rags, Bartok’s Makrokosmos and Stravinsky’s “Five Finger Pieces.”

I probably played for about two hours and made about $6. Though the toy piano is a strange instrument, it is kind of lost on the busy streets. First of all, it is so close to the ground, when people are walking by, they have to hunch over to see me. The only people I was eye-level with were children and people in wheel chairs. The people in wheel chairs all stopped to hear me play, but not a lot of pedestrians. The other thing is that the toy piano is not a very loud instrument. With all the noise on the streets, people couldn’t hear me until they were a few feet away. It wasn’t until then that I realized the toy piano is a very subtle instrument. There are many expressive elements, but they must be listened to with full attention.

I think this is why it’s uniqueness is magnified most in concert settings. The toy piano pokes fun at traditional concert rituals. This element is missing when busking. It was an interesting experience for me. I think I’ll try again though…maybe this time in the subway car.

A Peculiar Image

I noticed that Rob had placed the bird’s nest we found in Bloomington on top of the smallest toy piano I own. We found the nest on the sidewalk on his last day in Bloomington. We knew that Bloomington is a special place to us, so we thought bringing our “nest” from Bloomington to New York would be a nice symbol. I couldn’t help but to find the nest really large on top of the tiny toy piano. This particular piano has a gold trim, no black keys (they’re painted on), and the white keys are even too small for my fingers. Only a baby could play it! There’s also a music box mounted on the back. Oddly enough, this piano produces a lot of low sounds because the high-pitched notes create a lot of undertones. I thought it was a funny image, so I wanted to share it.

Skipping Rope

This past year, I hosted the first UnCaged Toy Piano Competition, a composition contest for toy pianos and electronics. This was the first time I hosted and judged a competition. We received over fifty entries from the US, Germany, Croatia, Australia, Mexico, Japan, Norway and Italy. We were thrilled with the general turn out! It was difficult to judge because all of the pieces are so different from one another.

Though he was not technically named a “winner,” I was pretty charmed by Ross Manning’s piece “Rotation” for toy piano and electric fan. It is more like an invention than a piece. The insides of the toy piano are exposed and a heavy rope lies across the toy piano beams. The rope is attached to a fan, so when you turn on the fan, the rope jumps and bounces around on the metal rods. This creates a pretty alien and unpredictable sound effect. The piece can be played as long or short as desired. “Rotation” will be set up as an installation for the UnCaged Winners concert in September. (more details soon)

Ross is from Australia and a member of the Clatterbox. I found him on their website for inventing the bass toy piano. Read and listen to it at the Clatterbox website:

A “Tinny” Tune

The moving truck finally arrived yesterday afternoon! Rob and I packed a ridiculous amount of small trinkets that most reasonable people would probably throw away when moving. Yesterday Rob showed me a toy stuffed cat that makes a purring sound when you shake it. I had no idea that was coming to NY with us. We certainly have a lot of chime toys, and I guess this stuffed cat is yet another variation of them.

I had miscounted the number of toy pianos I own. There are three on loan at the moment…and I have eight in my new home right now. That means I have eleven! I’m a little embarrassed that I lost track. I was also surprised to see the number of music boxes in the house. I have eight music boxes–six that actually have a wooden body on them. I was trying to get them all playing at the same time this evening. Some of them you have to keep cranking yourself. All the songs were blurred together, but the timbre of one particular music box stuck out. I have one that is very old without a wooden box. It was playing “Toyland” from Pinnochio. This particular music box mechanism sounds more “tinny” than others, and depending on what surface you place it on, it can sound either loud or muted. I can hear the rust on the teeth of it. I think that’s what makes it sound tinny. Tonight I had the idea of using these music box parts inside of a regular piano. This way, the regular piano could be the resonating chamber for these mechanisms. I haven’t gotten around to trying it, but it will most likely be an activity for tomorrow.

Funny how these objects make me feel at home.

A much-needed concert

Rob and I went to an incredible electro-acoustic ambient music concert last night featuring pianist Sakamoto and guitarist and renowned electronic musician, Fennesz. They played pieces from their new album, “Cendre.” The free concert took place at the World Financial Center Winter Garden. The venue was a large domed arena with tall fake palm trees in the court yard. There were hundreds of people sitting in the dark room listening and watching the abstract video projection in the background. It was a great open space for such spacious music.

I haven’t been to many concerts that bordered on ambient or “new-age.” I felt that it was kind of like a sonic bath. I loved watching Sakamoto relate to his piano sounds. Somehow, sound became more lucid and took a life of its own with the electronics.

Rob and I walked up to the second floor to listen to their last encore. To our surprise, the glass window on the second floor overlooked ground zero. I haven’t been there since 9/11. This image really heightened the musical experience. To see the large hole in the ground with sleeping construction equipment in it made the music seem even more calm and peaceful. As I was leaving the concert, I thought how this music must have such a different effect on people in New York than in Bloomington, IN. The sounds that we hear everyday in New York tend to be noises of construction, cars, trains, yelling people, etc. In Bloomington the sounds we hear are birds, lightning bugs, frat boys, bad 80’s music blasting from fraternity houses. It wasn’t until then I realized the necessity of listening to peaceful music. When we walked out of the venue, we heard construction workers with a jackhammer. It was such a sad palette-cleanser for our ears.

Mystery Egg

Last week, I contacted a Craigslist ad looking for weird, odd, eccentric artist/musicians in the NYC area. DCTV is making a documentary film for their summer camp/festival. I replied to them and they were interested in my work on the toy piano, particularly the piece that I fry an egg during the performance. The crew of 8 teenagers and one professional showed up at my apartment this morning to do a video shoot and interview. They were very nice and learning to set up proper lighting and microphones in my empty apartment. During the interview, there were several questions focused on the meaning of the egg in my piece. I really had no ability to answer that question concisely. I don’t really know how I ended up wanting to fry an egg, but I can still remember the moment I thought of it and how ridiculous I thought it would be. Actually, it came to me when I was sitting at a doctor’s office.

I acquired a really unique Humpty Dumpty music box while living in Toronto five years ago. I found it in a shop that sold small souvenirs and a lot of clocks. The Humpty Dumpty in my music box is a flat drawing that moves back and forth as the box sings. I knew the music box would sound really interesting with the toy piano so I bought it. The theme of an egg seem to come with the box. As I kept working on the piece, I realized it was no longer about Humpty Dumpty, but just an egg as a main character. A raw egg can symbolize many different things. It’s funny how easy it is to confuse the meaning of an ordinary object by taking it into a performance setting.

This piece is now the first movement of the multimedia piece ‘The Memoirist.’ It uses a toy piano, fryng pan, egg, and music box.

House of toy pianos

I am still waiting for the movers to bring my baby grand piano and remaining seven toy pianos to my new home. I don’t think I had originally planned to be a toy piano collector, it just happened naturally. I still remember when I spotted one of my favorite toy pianos at the Bloomington Antique Mall four years ago. The antique mall is no longer open, but it was a great place to go toy piano-hunting. In fact, I found two of them there and they are both extremely unique because they are so old. (One of them is actually an “antique” toy piano built in 1902!) This particular antique mall was arranged in little rooms full of organized clutter. I remember seeing the toy piano in the “toys and miscellaneous small things” room. It was up on a shelf and was being a shelf to shot glasses, an old embroidered handkerchief, souvenir mugs, earrings, old-fashioned brass mirrors. The keys are yellow and the wooden frame looked flimsier than usual. It looked very well-loved and very used. Just looking at it, the keys weren’t even flat and even. I didn’t even see that there was a toy piano there until I was right up next to it. I kind of like that about flea markets/antique malls. There are so many small things to look at. I touched a key and fell in love with its sound instantly. It didn’t sound like the new toy pianos. It had so much more ring and warmth. It was such a great find for only 35 dollars.

A strange sense of humor

I’ve been working on writing my “artist statement” the last couple of days because I’m applying for a handful of individual artist grants. To be honest, I don’t really know why I ended up playing the toy piano and loving it so much. I could name different aspects like the quirky sound and the “shock” effect at concerts, but none of it really seems to sum it up. The more I think about it, the more I think it just matches my sense of humor. On one hand I feel totally committed and extremely serious about performing the toy piano, on the other hand it satisfies some “tongue-in-cheek” deviant side for me too. Maybe it’s just a strange sense of humor. Some people think the sound of the toy piano is “creepy” and they don’t understand how I can get into “all that creepy-childhood-stuff,” but it doesn’t seem creepy or childlike to me at all. It’s just a surprisingly complex sound for a toy and kind of funny to me. It still tickles me every day to be playing the toy piano–I feel pretty lucky.