Margaret Leng Tan is a leading figure in experimental music, and the world's first toy piano virtuoso. Born in Singapore and based in New York, the classically-trained pianist collaborated closely with revolutionary American composer, John Cage and is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his music. Her 1997 album, The Art of the Toy Piano, broke new ground by transforming the toy piano into a real instrument. She is known for her dramatic and often humorous performances that include theatrical elements such as costumes and choreography. Tan is also a performance artist, multi-toy instrumentalist, vocalist and writer. Late in life, Tan discovered her comedic potential through the toy piano and has aspirations to be a "sit-down comic."

Tan was the first woman (and first Singaporean) to earn a Doctorate in Musical Arts from The Juilliard School. In 2002 she was the first Singaporean soloist to perform on Carnegie Hall's main stage. The 2015 Cultural Medallion recipient is now preparing for the premiere of Metamorphoses, a major new work written for her by American avant-garde composer, George Crumb. She is also assembling a sonic memoir of her life.

Born on 12 December 1945, Margaret Leng Tan is the second of three children of lawyer and politician, C.C. Tan and piano teacher, Joyce Tan. She started clamouring for piano lessons at a young age, partly because her older sister had started to learn the instrument. At age six, she began her own piano lessons. Her teachers included Singaporean pianist Lee Kum Sing. By age 10, she had moved on to complex classical pieces and was devoted to honing her skills as a musician.

She won the open section of the 1961 Singapore- Malaya Piano Competition, and was talent-spotted at a masterclass by Juilliard professor, Joseph Bloch, who encouraged her to audition for the renowned performing arts conservatory. She did so, successfully, and moved to New York at the age of 16. She earned her bachelor's and master’s degrees at the school and, in 1971, became the first woman and the first Singaporean to earn a Doctorate in Musical Arts from Juilliard.

Of those early years abroad, she says: "I was ready to conquer the world, and not afraid because I was too young to know any better." She thrived on the conservatory's intensely competitive environment, and performed as a concert pianist across America, Europe and Asia after graduating. By the time she clocked a decade as a classical musician, however, her interests had started to shift. She took an eight-month break to train hearing dogs for the deaf, and began her exploration of ethnic and contemporary music.

It was at this pivotal time in her life that she met composer John Cage. In 1981, she had started practising his music for prepared piano as part of a concert programme she was putting together. Malaysian dance doyenne Marion D'Cruz was visiting her in New York at the time and began to dance spontaneously to the music. On an impulse, Tan looked up the composer's number in the phonebook and invited him to see their hybrid creation. That was the beginning of their friendship and artistic collaboration, which would last until his death in 1992.

Cage's influence on her has been so immense that she has divided her life into BC (before Cage) and AC (after Cage). A practitioner of Zen Buddhism, he introduced her to a different way of approaching life and music. "It's not the mountain peak I focus on, it is the journey. That is one of the precepts I live by today," she says. Besides performing Cage's music all over the world, she has also recorded five albums of his work and safeguards the textual integrity of his music in editions of his work for the publisher, C.F. Peters.

In particular, she is known for performing Cage's prepared piano pieces, where the piano's sound is altered by the insertion of objects between its strings. She is also a "string piano virtuoso", adept in playing the instrument like a horizontal harp, plucking and strumming its strings.

Perhaps most significantly, Cage's work led Tan to the instrument that would define the next phase of her career — in 1993 she bought her first toy piano to perform the composer's 1948 Suite for Toy Piano on her John Cage memorial tribute at New York's Lincoln Center. She went on to record two acclaimed albums featuring the toy piano – The Art of the Toy Piano (1997) and She Herself Alone: The Art of the Toy Piano 2 (2010). She also appeared with a toy piano performing Cage's famous 4′33″ in Tan Pin Pin’s documentary, Singapore Gaga (2005).

Composers have written for her with the toy piano in mind, including American composer Aaron Jay Kernis, whose Concerto for Toy Piano premiered at Esplanade – Theatres in the Bay in Singapore in 2003. She has pushed the boundaries of avant-garde music with collaborators like Somei Satoh, Tan Dun, Michael Nyman, Julia Wolfe, Toby Twining and Ge Gan-ru. In 2017, she will premiere Metamorphoses, a major new work written for her by American avant-garde composer, George Crumb. She is also preparing a sonic memoir of her life.

In addition to amassing a collection of toy pianos, Tan is also drawn to making music with anything that produces sound, including household objects like tin cans and teapots. "I remember one reviewer wrote, 'she could even make a toilet plunger sound musical.' I think that's the ultimate accolade,” the witty musician says with a laugh.

In 2015, she performed with an arsenal of unconventional instruments in Curios, a multimedia theater-piece by Chinese American composer Phyllis Chen, commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of Arts for Tan’s 70th birthday.

Tan has no shortage of poetic accolades: The New York Times hailed her as the "queen of the toy piano," The New Yorker called her the "diva of avant-garde pianism" and The Village Voice, "the world’s premiere string piano virtuoso." In 2004, the Singapore International Film Festival hosted the world premiere of Evans Chan’s documentary, Sorceress of the New Piano: The Artistry of Margaret Leng Tan.

Asked to share some of the challenges she has faced in her career, Tan reveals that she recently suffered a "devastating tragedy" where an entire crate of her unconventional instruments was lost while they were in transit. These had been painstakingly collected over many years. "It was heartbreaking, but after I recovered from my grief I decided to go on a quest to find new instruments. It’s turning out to be quite an adventure!" When all is said and done she reckons that, "it is indeed a privilege to make your living by that which obsesses you."