These musicians/makers have contributed to UnCaged Festival year after year, despite our lack of financial support. They deserve a special shout-out for enabling UnCaged to continue after all these years. Without their contributions, insights and support, UnCaged simply wouldn’t be here.
Margaret Leng Tan
Most of us know her as the pioneer avant-garde pianist and toy pianist. Since 2009, Margaret has been one of the competition judges for our call-for-scores. She has also performed at every festival, supporting and coaching young composers to write for toy piano. Thank you, Margaret!
Rob Dietz
Every UnCaged event has been technically and artistically supported by my partner, Rob Dietz. Whether it be creating a lego toy piano, schlepping gear, running sound at a make-shift space, to discussing curation ideas or finding short films, Rob has given his technical and artistic expertise to UnCaged since its first year.
John Glover
A wonderful composer, friend and artistic director, John has contributed to the festival as a composer in 2017 in a piece, “Snow” for toy piano and film. Through the years, John has served as a production manager to the festival, being a sound board for all things back-end/production-oriented. From answering questions like, “should we move the placement of the bicycle wheel for logistical purposes?” to “I don’t know how to deal with this dicey audience member,” or “that person isn’t here yet,” John is one of the few people that know the special needs of toy piano festival production.
Ranjit Bhatnagar
Instrument-builder/creator, Ranjit has contributed so many interesting modified toy instruments and gadgets, including the jello toy piano in 2013, to the Robot Toy Piano. Named the “Vexbot” (after Satie’s Vexations), the robot was the inspiration for the 2018 call-for-scores, where all entries used the robot toy piano. We later took these pieces to the prestigious Gaudeamus Muziekwiek in Holland to perform at the Spielklok Museum. Thank you Ranjit for all of your creative contributions!
Christina Oorebeek
Composer and dear friend, Christina has written numerous inventive pieces for toy piano in the last 2 decades. Our friendship started when I reached out about her toy piano and electronic piece, “Chromotoy” in 2009. After countless emails, we were able to meet in Amsterdam many years later, which became the beginning of an ongoing collaboration. We worked together on a new piece at the Luxembourg Toy Piano Festival in 2015, and she was instrumental in arranging our call-for-scores for robot toy piano with the Conlon Foundation (NL) in 2018. Christina has contributed adventurous pieces for toy piano at every UnCaged Festival. Thank you, Christina! !