phyllis chen

Rob and I went to see Laurie Anderson’s new piece, “Homeland” at the Rose Theater. It was great to see what she is doing these days. I was moved by the sincerity of her songs and loved her quirky ways of storytelling. There were a couple of parts where she put an electronic effect on [...]

Many people have asked me if I have ever busked as a toy pianist. My only real attempt at busking took place on Queens Street in Toronto over five years ago. At that time, I was performing a lot more solo toy piano pieces. I was also prepared to play some transcriptions of Scott Joplin [...]

I noticed that Rob had placed the bird’s nest we found in Bloomington on top of the smallest toy piano I own. We found the nest on the sidewalk on his last day in Bloomington. We knew that Bloomington is a special place to us, so we thought bringing our “nest” from Bloomington to New York would be a nice symbol. I couldn’t help but to find the nest really large on top of the tiny toy piano. This particular piano has a gold trim, no black keys (they’re painted on), and the white keys are even too small for my fingers. Only a baby could play it!

This past year, I hosted the first UnCaged Toy Piano Competition, a composition contest for toy pianos and electronics. This was the first time I hosted and judged a competition. We received over fifty entries from the US, Germany, Croatia, Australia, Mexico, Japan, Norway and Italy. We were thrilled with the general turn out! It [...]

The moving truck finally arrived yesterday afternoon! Rob and I packed a ridiculous amount of small trinkets that most reasonable people would probably throw away when moving. Yesterday Rob showed me a toy stuffed cat that makes a purring sound when you shake it. I had no idea that was coming to NY with us. [...]