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.

Astoria Waltz

Rob and I moved into our new place in Astoria a little over a week ago. Last week, we walked along Ditmars to Astoria Park and came across a really charming cafe/bar named Waltz-Astoria. There was an open mic night going on. This quaint space was packed with local Astorian singer-songwriters. I have never been part of an open mic night, so last night I decided to bring my toy pianos and play a couple of pieces.
I realized I had never written a waltz before, so two days ago I wrote “Astoria Waltz” and performed it fresh at the open mic. It was such a great time. Everyone was so friendly and it’s always so fun to bring the toy piano out unexpectedly. To my surprise, the owner of Waltz-Astoria was once a piano major at Indiana University! We just happen to miss each other in our years in Bloomington.

Every one else was a singer/songwriter with their guitar. I’m sure the toy piano really stuck out. Stay tuned. Listen to Astoria Waltz on the link below. It is written for two toy pianos, one hand playing on each one.

Astoria Waltz

An Interesting Show at the Stone

Rob and I had our first house guest in our empty apartment in Astoria. Tatsuya Nakatani, a free-improv percussionist from Pennsylvania, needed a place to stay the night before his concert at the Stone on Sunday. He performed with Kaoru Watanabe (western and eastern flutes)
/>and Adam Rudolph (hand percussion.) Rob and I have heard Tatsuya several times before in both solo and trio settings. I remember several years ago we were in Santa Fe and saw a listing of his performance that night. What a coincidence, right? Actually, this guy performs more frequently than anyone I know….driving everywhere with his gear and always giving it his all. What a road-warrior.

Tatsuya’s set included drums, a variety of symbols( some that had big ripped holes in them), ash trays, tibetan bowls and a variety of sticks. My usual skeptical feelings about free-improv were dismissed pretty quickly in the evening.The color palette was pretty unbelievable. While listening to them, I thought about my own experience recently performing a free-improv piece with the percussionist Lukas Ligeti. I was pretty freaked out by the whole experience–maybe that gave me a deeper appreciation of the performance last night. It was great to see these guys so comfortable in the field.

Starfish

Here is a piece that I created this week called “Starfish.” The piece is made entirely from wind-chime samples…another tinkly-sounding instrument that I like to use in my sets. Rob used to have a really beautiful set of chimes on his front porch.

I remember watching starfish at the aquarium and being amazed by how slow they moved. They could be in one spot and position for hours. You might need headphones (or speakers) to hear all the lower frequencies. To listen click below:

Starfish

Toy piano mover-a harder job than it sounds (part 2)

At my concerts, people often joke about how “cute” the toy piano is and how lucky I am to have a “portable” piano. Now thinking about it, showing up to a venue with a piano already there is definitely much easier than lugging around toy pianos. Stairs are the worst: lugging these odd-shaped bags piece by piece. It’s not so much about weight, but their unique shape that make them difficult to carry in one trip. The more shows I do, the more little props I add to my toy piano performances such as cooking bowls, mallets, music boxes,chime toys, and other noisy gadgets…now I’ve also added video gear, projectors, and electronic equipment. Often times it feels like a big pain to carry so many small things, but at some point, I realized that my performances were starting to evolve and become something more like theatre. Sometimes it looks like a junkyard full of trinkets, but they all play a part in the performance! So now, when I see the toy piano, it no longer appears as cute and dainty any more. It’s just one of many things to carry if you are the “toy piano mover.”

Toy piano movers–a harder job than it sounds (part 1)

The first toy piano I got was a two and a half octave baby grand Schoenhut. It came with a small bench that was about 10 inches tall. All together, the toy piano was only about 28 pounds. The legs screw off of the bottom of the toy piano, so everything fit nicely into a black garbage bag. I found it quite funny to transport a toy piano ‘incognito’ in a black trash bag. As I became more serious about the toy piano, I acquired a three octave concert grand Schoenhut. This piano is different because it has a lid that opens, four legs instead of three, and is made of mahogany wood instead of plywood (this makes the sound brighter). Getting a few extra notes on the toy piano has come at a really troublesome cost for me. The instrument is almost 40 pounds, which doesn’t sound like much, but ended up being a royal pain when brought on subways or walked down the street.

First thing, it takes two hands to carry the body of the toy piano because of the shape. Everything else could fit in a backpack, but not as easy as the black trash bag technique. Second, as my toy piano shows have grown, I use more than one toy piano for performances, sometimes up to three. Using both hands to carry one toy piano ends up being a pretty big hassle. My fiancée, Rob, has mused over different ways of transporting them. Because the instrument is about 24 inches by 24 inches, we needed to find a box-like suitcase with wheels—not as easy as it might sound. We ended up with a computer suitcase from Ebay that weighed 50 pounds! All together, we were lugging 90 pounds for a three-octave toy piano, just so it could have a case around it and wheels (that didn’t actually work so well.) I have numerous photos of Rob and I lugging toy pianos in New York, Chicago, Bloomington, Amsterdam. Since there is no protective cover for the instruments, I have ended up taking a lot of taxis to haul them place to place, performing countless toy piano tunes in cabs to entertain my driver. This ended up being a costly solution, so I contacted the Colorado Case Company to have a custom-made case for this particular piano. I now have a soft case that is the shape of the toy piano (without the legs) that fits nicely into a hard case with wheels. The hard case is still being built at the moment, but it should put an end to this saga.

The Guts of the Instrument

After concerts, people often ask me if they can look under the lid of the toy piano to see how it works. I explain to them that they are made of metal rods instead of strings, which is surprising to most people because it appears in the shape of a piano. The shorter the rods, the higher pitched the sound is. A few weeks ago, I was meeting with composer and fellow ICicle, Nathan Davis. I had asked him to write a piece for me using toy piano and electronics, so our first meeting was a brainstorming/workshop session to play around with these toys. To my surprise, on top of the toy piano sat a piece of metal with long metal rods attached to it. It looked exactly like the guts of the toy piano, but the rods were much longer (almost 12 inches). I asked him where he got it, and he said it use to be the insides of a grandfather clock! The metal slab with rods attached to it sat on top of the wooden upright toy piano. The box-like shape of the instrument acted like a resonating chamber for the grandfather clock rods…this seem to be a really ripe idea for us to experiment with that morning. We played them gently with some yarn mallets. There was also something quite intimate about getting up close to hear the vibration of the metal rods. You can hear so many lower frequencies when you get up close. It was strangely satisfying to discover the bass toy piano as a grandfather clock. I’m curious to see how the piece turns out…