Event information:
Tuesday, December 9 at 7 pm
World Financial Center's Winter Garden (Battery Park City on the Hudson River)
Admission is free
Information available at (212) 945-0505 or at the WFC's Winter Garden website

John John Schaefer for the world premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis' "Concerto for Toy Piano and Chamber Orchestra," another WNYC commission. Written especially for toy piano player Margaret Leng Tan, she and the East Coast-based new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, 20-members strong, perform this reverberant and percussive piece. Plus, hear other percussion works by Lou Harrison and Steve Reich, which in the vaulting space of the World Financial Center, ought not to be missed. The concert is being recorded for broadcast on New Sounds.

About Aaron Jay Kernis:
One of the youngest composers ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Aaron Jay Kernis has become among the most honored American voices. Each work of Kernis bears the unmistakable stamp of a wildly fertile musical imagination and a distinctive voice forged out of the wide-ranging musical languages of the 1980s and 1990s. His music bursts with rich poetic imagery, brilliant instrumental color, distinctive musical wit, and infectious exuberance.

Mr. Kernis has writen works for a variety of forces, including Air for violin and piano, written for Joshua Bell; a violin/chamber orchestra piece for Pamela Frank and the Minnesota Orchestra; a Double Concerto for Violin, Guitar and Orchestra for Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Sharon Isbin (commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra) and a second string quartet for the Lark Quartet. In addition to the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 2 (musica instrumentalis), his many awards have included the 2002 Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition for the cello and orchestra version of Colored Field, the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, an NEA grant, a Bearns Prize, a New York Foundation for the Arts Award, and three BMI Student Composer Awards.

About Margaret Leng Tan:
Hailed as "the world's premiere string piano virtuoso" and "the diva of avant-garde pianism" (New York Times), she is known for her performances of Asian and American music that defy the conventional boundaries of the instrument. Margaret Leng Tan's commitment to repertory transcending the piano's conventional boundaries has inspired many composers to create performer-specific works for her. They include John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Tan Dun, Somei Satoh and Toby Twining. The world's only professional toy pianist, Tan has transformed a toy into a legitimate instrument as heard on The Art of the Toy Piano (Point/Universal). Tan is a recipient of The National Endowment for the Arts' Solo Recitalist Award and the first woman to graduate with a doctorate from The Juilliard School. Originally from Singapore, she now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her three dogs, three Steinways and thirteen toy pianos (at last count).

About Alarm Will Sound:
Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member band committed to innovative performances and recordings of contemporary music. Founded in 2001, it already has established a reputation for performing demanding music with energetic virtuosity. Members of the ensemble began playing together while studying at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York . With diverse experience in composition, improvisation, jazz and popular styles, early music, and world musics, they bring intelligence and a sense of adventure to all their performances.


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