Singapore Art Music Production Wins Apra Amcos’ Art Music Award
Photo credit: Pier Carthew
A collaboration between music compositions by Erik Griswold and pianist Margaret Leng Tan.
This year, Apra Amcos has awarded Work of the Year: Dramatic to Erik Griswold’s Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep, a Chamber Made & CultureLink Singapore co-production with a wonderful concept, engaging composition and ever-present humour.
Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep is a sonic portrait of new music icon Margaret Leng Tan – a work that sweeps across the senses. It is also an evocative exploration of memory, time, control and loss.
Margaret Leng Tan, New York-based Singaporean pianist is known as Queen of the Toy Piano. She’d forged a path as a major force within the American avant-garde, serving as muse for such giants as John Cage and George Crumb, and transforming the toy piano into a serious instrument. Her stellar career is a touchstone for the past 40 years of experimental musical innovation.
Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep combines spoken and recorded text, projected images and original music for prepared piano, toy piano, toys and percussion by Tan’s long-term collaborator Erik Griswold.
Created by a team of Singaporean and Australian artists, including director Tamara Saulwick, video designer Nick Roux, and dramaturg Kok Heng Leun and performed by Tan, this cross-cultural collaboration is an evocative collage of the forces that have shaped Tan’s life and how music has been both her passion and her refuge.
Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep is a Chamber Made and CultureLink Singapore co-production and is co-commissioned by Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay and AsiaTOPA
World Premiere | 28 February 2020| AsiaTOPA | Arts Centre Melbourne
Singapore Premiere | 1-4 April 2021 | Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay
Related news: New Winners at APRA AMCOS Art Music Award
