2018 Florida International Toy Piano Festival Resident Artists

The 2018 Florida International Toy Piano Festival features the inauguration of the first performing artist residency in the City of St. Petersburg, FL. Two festival alumni were chosen by The New Music Conflagration, Inc.’s Executive Director (Elizabeth A. Baker) and Co-Artistic Director (Mikel Thomas) and five more were chosen from an open call for proposals. The artist residents will live in cabins on the Pioneer Settlement side of Boyd Hill Nature Preserve for a week (January 2-8, 2018) during which time they will engage with the local community through public performances, open workshops, school visits, and lectures. The artist residents will also, spend time exploring the nature preserve and create new works influenced by their local experiences.

2018 Pioneer Settlement Artists-In-Residence
Melissa Grey & David Morneau – l’Artiste ordinaire (NYC)
Cindy Giron (The Hague, The Netherlands)
Daniel Fawcett & Li Tao – TATAT Ensemble (Chicago, IL & Eugene, OR)
Jonathan Hannau & Kelley Sheehan – Plucky Plunkers (Chicago, IL)

This program has been made possible by: The New Music Conflagration, Inc.; The City of Saint Petersburg, Florida; The Florida Department for Cultural Affairs; The St. Petersburg Arts Alliance; and Creative Pinellas.

Melissa Grey & David Morneau – l’Artiste ordinaire (NYC)

Established in January 2016, l’Ao is a collaborative partnership between composer- performers Melissa Grey & David Morneau. They have three expansive projects: MOTHER, a love letter to the ocean, a hand-made card from her grateful children; Photon Ecstasy, a growing catalog of compositions that engages music, sound, science fiction, and interactive light to address the hubris of certainty; and Soft Series, a concert series dedicated to presenting soft premieres. These projects allow l’Ao to collaborate and connect with musicians, artists, engineers, scientists, and designers. For MOTHER, they have been selected as the 2018 Toy Piano Pioneer Resident Artists at the Boyd Hill Nature Preserve. The premiere of Photon Ecstasy was commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center in conjunction with the exhibition of Dan Rose’s artist books, Plaisirs Arbitraires | Arbitrary Pleasures. New York Arts wrote that with repeated listenings “there’s more to be moved and impressed by, to learn from [Photon Ecstasy].” Their first collaboration, Gadget Berry Dimple: A Glossary of False Translation (benjolin, Merlin, spoken word), was performed for Hans Tammen’s 100th Anniversary of Dada at Spectrum NYC and has been published by Circumference journal, which supports poetry in translation. artisteordinaire.org

Cindy Giron (The Hague, The Netherlands)

Cindy Giron is a composer, performer, and educator based in Boston and The Netherlands. Intrigued by silences, textures, journeys, contrasts, and conversations, her music explores all instrumentations from solo, chamber, orchestral, electronic compositions, all the way to merging different art forms, sometimes creating installations. As a 2014 First Music winner, Giron was commissioned by the New York Youth Symphony for Nelumbo, an orchestral piece with a premiere at Carnegie Hall and the United Palace Theater in New York City. Other collaborations include having not forgotten, a solo percussion piece commissioned by Gavin Ryan with a premiere in Provo, Utah and Gothenburg, Sweden. This year, Giron collaborated with the contemporary Dutch ensemble Kluster5 for the creation of her new chamber ensemble piece oNo, and also received a commission from St. Petersburg, Florida’s RogueDance Collective for her piece hu-nature, an electronic track accompanying excerpts, a newly choreographed work. Past travels and collaborations include participation as a composition fellow at Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA (2014), Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music in Germany (summer 2014 and 2016), and the Impuls International Ensemble and Composers Academy in Graz, Austria (2015). At Impuls, Giron created her first installation Friluftsliv, in collaboration with cinematographer Toshiki Yashiro. This past year, Giron also participated as a composer and performer at Co-Incidence, an experimental music residency in Somerville, MA during January 2017. At Co-Incidence, Giron premiered her mono-drama i-4-1-2 for electronics, video, lights, voice and metal objects. It was during this time that she also created a new installation Blanket for performers, fabric and movement. Recent performances include participation at the 2017 Wave Field Synthesis Festival in Den Haag, Netherlands, the Third Life Studio in Somerville, MA. Giron holds a Bachelors of Music from Manhattan School of Music, a Masters in Music Theory and Composition from NYU Steinhardt, and is currently studying her second Masters Degree in Music Composition with Practice-Based Research and a minor in Contemporary Piano Performance at The Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, Netherlands. cindygiron.com

Daniel Fawcett & Li Tao – TATAT Ensemble (Chicago, IL & Eugene, OR)

Tatat Ensemble is an ensemble dedicated to the performance of new music by living composers. Founded in 2017 by Li Tao and Daniel Fawcett, they have sought to combine their interests in theater, poetry, electronic media and visual art to create unique concert experiences for their audiences. They actively try and create large concert length works often implementing lesser-known, self-created musical instruments. Additionally, they seek to encourage artists of all fields to help them build an active repertoire for rarities such the as toy piano, theremin, music boxes and more. Currently, they have an ongoing project currently taking place through various social medias entitled #picturethis where they are asking both musicians and non-musicians alike to submit graphic scores for them to interpret. They hope this will bring forth more active participation and greater interest in new music. tatatensemble.com

Jonathan Hannau & Kelley Sheehan – Plucky Plunkers (Chicago, IL)

Plucky Plunkers has ambiguous beginnings and ambiguous endings. Touting the banner as Chicago’s best and only toy piano duo they seek to engage audiences in riveting concerts that have been described as, “Pretty cool I guess”, and “Yea it was fun to listen to”. They collaborate regularly with composers in and around the city and seek to push the toy piano medium to some arbitrarily high level through eclectic programming and death defying stunts. Jonathan is a proud Schoenhut artist who plays with not one but two upright toy pianos each with it’s own unique sound. His comrade Kelley is a proud BC toy piano artist who plays on a two and a half octave baby grand. Unfortunately because of their own pride and hubris it has created a heavy rivalry in the group due to their concepts of what model is better. It should be noted that both were paid heavily by each company to say that theirs is better. They are currently in the process of planning their second show “The meme show”. pluckyplunkers.com