Margaret Leng Tan, the 79-year-old Singapore-born, New York-based pianist who has revolutionized experimental music through unconventional instruments, will present her deeply personal performance piece "Dragon Ladies Don't Weep" in Seoul this Friday and Saturday as part of the 2025 Seoul Performing Arts Festival. The acclaimed avant-garde musician, who has spent over four decades transforming everyday objects like toy pianos, teapots, and coffee cans into musical instruments, describes the work as a sonic memoir that weaves together music, text, voice recordings, images, and an assortment of toys.
Tan's approach to music-making stems from her mentor John Cage's revolutionary philosophy. "It was my mentor, the avant-garde composer John Cage's lifelong conviction that one can make music with any object capable of producing sound," Tan explained in a written interview. "The conventional piano has a long history of tradition and expectations. With my newfound instruments there are no rules to be broken, my imagination can soar." This philosophy has positioned her as one of the world's leading avant-garde musicians and a muse to legendary composers including Cage and George Crumb.
The performance title carries personal significance for Tan, who describes herself as an "indomitable Dragon Lady" and admits to a striking confession: she has not cried in 30 years. "I think I have lost the ability to do so, even on such profound occasions as the death of my parents or my beloved dogs," she revealed. "It's not that I have lost the ability to feel, but those feelings are locked so very deeply within me." This emotional landscape forms the foundation of her sonic autobiography, filled with fragments of memories and reflections.
Central to both her life and performance is her struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder, which she describes as "a relentless leitmotif that threads throughout the entire play." Tan emphasizes the authenticity of her presentation, stating, "I think it is important that the audience realizes I am not acting. Rather, I am simply being myself on stage." Having achieved a position of influence in the music world, she feels strongly about being open about her OCD to convey that "it is possible to achieve despite having a handicap."
Despite the serious subject matter, Tan's characteristic humor and childlike playfulness permeate the performance. Her signature toy pianos take center stage alongside a toy phone—a tongue-in-cheek reference to her decades-long resistance to mobile technology—a toy gun, and other whimsical objects, all deployed with her distinctive wit. "I have always wanted to be a sit-down comic," Tan noted. "The toy piano encourages me to hone my comedic and theatrical talents in a way that the adult grand piano does not."
Tan's musical philosophy embraces the challenge of working with unconventional tools, drawing inspiration from Marcel Duchamp's principle that "poor tools require better skills." She hones her pianistic technique on humble toy pianos and develops percussion abilities by striking rows of coffee cans, proving that limitations can spark greater creativity. "A good craftsman doesn't blame his tools," she believes, demonstrating that her choice of unconventional instruments demands greater effort but yields unlimited imaginative possibilities.
As someone who has continuously expanded the definition of what constitutes a musical instrument, Tan hopes Seoul audiences will carry something intangible from the experience. "It is my hope that a sound, an image, a phrase, a feeling, a thought will also linger with Seoul audiences," she expressed. "And what more painless and spontaneous way is there to be initiated into the world of the avant-garde than through the beguiling world of toys?" Tickets for the Seoul Performing Arts Festival performances are available through Nol.
