Photo Flash: Ecstatic Music Festival: Margaret Leng Tan Premiered George Crumb, Suzanne Farrin & Kelly Moran

This concert embodied the bountiful extended potential of the piano - the now "classic avant-garde" prepared piano of John Cage; George Crumb, the venerable master still discovering new means of expression within his inimitable style; and Kelly Moran's latest contribution to the prepared piano repertoire alongside Suzanne Farrin's bold forays into new sonic territory. All this channeled through Margaret Leng Tan, hailed by the Washington Post as "the formidable doyenne of the avant-garde piano who has built a career on upending tradition, pushing her instrument into fresh, no-holds-barred sonic worlds."

Tan gave the New York premiere of Metamorphoses, a major new work written for her by the seminal 20th century composer George Crumb, for amplified piano, toy piano, percussion and voice. Metamorphoses was performed with Monica Duncan's video projections, in which atmospheric visual textures complement the music. Tan also premiered two new EMF-commissioned pieces by young composers responding to Cage and Crumb's influence: a work for prepared piano by Kelly Moran, and a haunting new piece by 2017 Rome Prize winner Suzanne Farrin that acknowledges not only Crumb's important contribution to American music, but, in Farrin's words, " also Margaret Leng Tan's special role as the artist who has brought the piano's insides to life on stage." Works by Toby Twining and John Cage rounded out the program.