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Johannes and I played at King’s Place last night and will be leaving for our last Sounding Off concert  in a few minutes at Limelight.  The space at King’s Place was  more like a concert setting. We are told that the Limelight venue should be a little bit more like a bar/club performance. Yesterday evening was the first time I was also handling the images/video for our performance. I am relieved that the technical aspects of the show went relatively smoothly, considering how much we had prepared.

One thing Johannes and I have had to get use to is a lot of last-minute changes. The Stockhausen Tierkreis invites so much exploration from us and I feel that we have continually changed our arrangements in performance. It has been a really rewarding experience for me because each performance really is different. There is less sense of “execution” that might be involved in some other more traditional pieces. Instead, we really have a chance to sculpt the sound to each performance space and I feel more of a heightened sensitivity knowing that many of these “performative” aspects can only be determined on stage. I am looking forward to our last performance of it tonight!

I am excited about my upcoming concerts in Taipei and Tokyo this month. I heard about Ecole Café from a Taiwan University student as a potential venue for a toy piano concert while I am visiting. I was surprised to see the quaint venue located close to Daan Park in the middle of Taipei City, right in my parents’ neighborhood. The curator of the venue, Taven, has done a wonderful job bringing unique local musical acts and films to the venue for the last couple of years. She responded to my request for hosting a toy piano show that will take place this coming Monday, March 15 at 4pm.

I am rather ignorant to the contemporary art and music scene going on in Taipei. Taven is so thrilled that there will be a toy piano performance here. I guess it is something that doesn’t exist at all in this country. From a classical music background, it is apparently rare (or unheard of) to see someone that “crosses over” to something less traditional. I was encouraged to hear that there is now a developing art/music scene that has never existed in Taipei city before.

The café is beautifully decorated with interesting antique furniture and a good collection of art magazines, postcards and Asian toys/gadgets. I also have never seen a row of theater seats in a café. We went down a spiraling staircase to see the basement where all of the performances take place. There was a really interesting art exhibit by a Taiwanese artist, Mia Liu. There is also a velvet curtain that drapes over a nice view of a small rock garden. I feel very lucky to be performing in such a unique and eccentric space. Thanks to Taven, I will have the opportunity to present the toy piano to a group of people in Taipei.

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 her microphone and her voice was transformed into a deep male voice. Pretty hilarious. She would talk about politics in a light manner at these moments. She had some great transitions. One of them, she was wearing a pair of white sunglasses with a small microphone attached to it. She was hitting her head side to side and biting her teeth together. The mic could pick up these sounds and it created a really booming rhythmic line.