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ModeRecords uploaded a new video
(4 months ago)
Margaret Leng Tan, prepared piano
In 1944, John Cage was invited to participate in "The Imagery of Chess" exhibition at the Julien Levy Ga...
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Margaret Leng Tan, prepared piano
In 1944, John Cage was invited to participate in "The Imagery of Chess" exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. The artists included Calder, Noguchi, Motherwell, Breton, Duchamp, Ernst, Man Ray, Tanning and other leading surrealists.
Cage contributed a painting entitled "Chess Pieces". It was purchased at the show and went into a private collection. For decades it was deemed lost and was (almost) forgotten by Cage afficionados and scholars.
Re-assembling the original artworks for "The Imagery of Chess Revisited" show (2005-06) at the Isamu Noguchi Museum in New York led to the tracking down of the Cage painting.
Cage expert Margaret Leng Tan set about transcribing the music in the painting into a playable score which receives its premiere recording here.
Chess Pieces is from 1944, an emotional and creative year for Cage; besides echoes of Satie, Chess Pieces contains prophetic touches of minimalism and has features in common with his monumental piano piece, Four Walls, from the same year.
A renowned Cage interpreter, Ms. Tan worked closely with the composer from 1981 to 1992. Cage was particularly appreciative of her performances of his works for the prepared piano. This is Ms. Tan's long-awaited recording of Cage's prepared piano masterpiece, the Sonatas and Interludes of 1946-48.
Also included is the first recording of the only other musical score from "The Imagery of Chess" show, neo-classical composer Vittorio Rieti's Chess Serenade.
Also available as a surround sound DVD with full performance videos of Chess Pieces and Chess Serenade, plus 2 documentaries: Mr. Cage's Prepared Piano (Ms. Tan takes an in-depth look at the prepared piano).
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ModeRecords uploaded a new video
(5 months ago)
Margaret Leng Tan, toy pianos, toy instruments, piano, percussion, music boxes, voice
In addition to being a renowned new music pianist, Margaret Le...
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Margaret Leng Tan, toy pianos, toy instruments, piano, percussion, music boxes, voice
In addition to being a renowned new music pianist, Margaret Leng Tan is the foremost specialist at the toy piano. She has concertized worldwide with her miniature instruments, bestowing them with serious music status in repertoire both written for her and arrangements.
For this disc of attractive yet challenging music, Ms. Tan performs Cage's classic "Suite for Toy Piano" plus her arrangement of Cage's seminal "Dream" for toy & grand piano (a work that foreshadowed new age music); and her arrangement for voice and toy instruments of a recent song by George Crumb.
Ms. Tan uses no less than six different toy pianos here. Some works find the toy piano performed with other instruments including grand piano, toy zithers, music boxes, glockenspiels and percussion, with Ms. Tan as a veritable one-person toy orchestra.
Her initial toy piano CD, "The Art of the Toy Piano" on Philips/Point (1997) was critically acclaimed and a strong cross-over seller.
This long awaited follow-up recording combines serious classics (Cage's "Suite") with colorful fun (Griswold), a sultry blues-tango (Twining), drama (Crumb), to haunting meditations (Cage's "Dream" and Liben).
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ModeRecords uploaded a new video
(5 months ago)
Sintax Error, music
Art Spiegelman, images
Enzo Salomone, narrator
On 9/11, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman (creator of "Maus"...
more
Sintax Error, music
Art Spiegelman, images
Enzo Salomone, narrator
On 9/11, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman (creator of "Maus") was in the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero, fleeing the crumbling World Trade Center with his family. He wrote In the Shadow of No Towers to illustrate the first-hand horror of that day, and the grief and disillusionment which followed. Inspired by the book, guitarist/composer Marco Cappelli puts together a team and transforms it into a multi-media production. Actor John Turturro, a quintessential New Yorker, is the narrator accompanied by the music of Sintax Error fusing modern classical, rock, jazz, country and cartoon music (the original Italian version is also included with actor Enzo Salomone). The combination of all of these talents makes In the Shadow of No Towers a revelatory experience; its sorrow, confusion and rage all familiar to those who have followed the turmoil of the last ten years, but managing to surprise with its richness and variety.
This work is dedicated ten years later to the victims of the so called "collateral damage" in the USA, Afghanistan and Iraq
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ModeRecords uploaded a new video
(5 months ago)
Sintax Error, music
Art Spiegelman, images
Enzo Salomone, narrator
On 9/11, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman (creator of "Maus"...
more
Sintax Error, music
Art Spiegelman, images
Enzo Salomone, narrator
On 9/11, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman (creator of "Maus") was in the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero, fleeing the crumbling World Trade Center with his family. He wrote In the Shadow of No Towers to illustrate the first-hand horror of that day, and the grief and disillusionment which followed. Inspired by the book, guitarist/composer Marco Cappelli puts together a team and transforms it into a multi-media production. Actor John Turturro, a quintessential New Yorker, is the narrator accompanied by the music of Sintax Error fusing modern classical, rock, jazz, country and cartoon music (the original Italian version is also included with actor Enzo Salomone). The combination of all of these talents makes In the Shadow of No Towers a revelatory experience; its sorrow, confusion and rage all familiar to those who have followed the turmoil of the last ten years, but managing to surprise with its richness and variety.
This work is dedicated ten years later to the victims of the so called "collateral damage" in the USA, Afghanistan and Iraq
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Ariel