Musical Chairs

On Saturday night, I went to Gallery 345 to listen to mini-uet, 8 new works for toy pianos from the Toy Piano Composers Collective (all 8 composers were there), played by junctQin (pronounced junction) who were Elaine Lau, Joseph Ferreti, and Stephanie Chua. In my mind, I was picturing Schroeder from Peanuts with Kalimba-like songs. In reality, toy pianos made by Schoenhut are plinkety-plink curiosities without much dynamic or tone. Add to the mix composers who are into modern classical music without much melody and harmony and I was getting a few "my kid could do that" moments.

Chess Suite (Monica Clorey) for 2 toy pianos attempt to represent the chess pieces. For example, a pawn can only move 1 step at a time. It would take a more educated ear than mine to discern that in the cacophony. In the final movement, there were some quiet passages that "sounded" like an end-game to me, but maybe I was trying to create pattern out of chaos. Fractured (Christian Floisand) was the most successful and enjoyable piece for myself and the audience. A grand piano, accompanied by a toy piano and "acoustic table" played a series of themes with complex poly-rhythm. The usage of a simplified piano/music score to represent percussive patterns to turn a trained pianist into a good percussionist is a very clever idea. With Ares' Breath (Ruth Guechtal) we're back to key-banging, to represent the misery of March, for 2 pianos and 1 toy piano. One Short Piece for my Short Attention Span (Igor Correia) was more traditional, but there was nothing outstanding in any of the musical snippets in this piece.

After the intermission, Interlocking No. 3 (Chris Thornborrow) was first up. All 3 pianists played on the same piano. I think part of the enjoyment of the piece would have been to see them negotiate their lines (as mentioned in the description). Unfortunately, like all classical concerts, you have to sit snug in your chair and have no chance to stand close to the performer and observe their technique. Dragging Death to Life (Dan Brophy) was the most trying of the compositions. According to the composer, this piece is not only not pitch-oriented like most modern pieces, but it also does away with rhythmic phrasing as well. Also, the performers are to ignore each others' tempo. It certainly sounded unlike anything that I would consider to be music. Crosscurrents (Glenn James) was the other successful piece. Two separate themes interacted with each other on piano, toy piano, and music box. This composition showed, in my opinion, where the strength of a toy piano lies: a "playable" music box. The evening ended with Welcome to Warp Zone! (Elisha Denburg), which was to be a homage to the music of 8 and 16-bit video game without actually referencing any well-known game music. It was disappointingly 80s TV special instead. It takes more than a toy piano, piano, or even a Casio synth to create those 8-bit earworms.