David Bohn - Toy Piano - Third Set

A native of Wisconsin, David Bohn In his career as an organist, has given premieres of over fifty organ works. He currently resides in West Allis, Wisconsin, and is the Music Coordinator at Peace United Methodist in Brookfield. David Bohn is a strong advocate for both the Toy Piano and miniature forms in composition. Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame and his 100-Note Toy Piano Project exemplify his commitment and dedication to the instrument and the genre.

Concert Dates

  • September 18, 2022 - Hawthorn Contemporary Art Gallery in Milwaukee
  • October 8, 2022 - Virtual Performance online

15 one-minute selections for David Bohn and Toy Piano (third set)

  • Pariân Wedding Ceremony

    Ali A'râb

    Ali A'râb is an Iranian contemporary composer. He was born in 2003 in Isfahan, Iran. A'râb started his music education in Fine Art School of Music of Isfahan and graduated in 2021. Now he is a scholar of music and intrested in learning about traditional cultures.

    Pariân is the plural of Pari. Pari(or Peri)is a winged spirits renowed for their beauty in Persian mythology. This piece is inspired by this Iranian myth and is based on an old Iranian folk melody called (Mobârak Bâd). This melody was sung in Iranian weddings. In this piece, I have tried to use the rhythms that were used in old wedding celebrations in Iran.

  • Kamino Dance

    Marek Feddern

    Marek Feddern was born in 1991 in northern Germany. He is a passionate electric guitarist and already used both his instrument and his voice for numerous compositions of his band Feathers and Greed, which he founded together with his cousin in 2017.

    Kamino is a planet in the Star Wars universe where it always rains. So the title can be understood as a dance in the rain. This piece is my first piano composition and it was created during my composition course at the university of the arts Bremen. Thanks to my teacher Juan María Solare.

  • Ceremonies Performed on Crystal Instruments

    Erik Branch

    ERIK BRANCH is a native of New York City, and received a BA and MA in Music (Composition) from Hunter College. He lives near Orlando, Florida, where he is active as a pianist, musical director, composer/arranger, operatic tenor, and actor on stage and screen.

    The title, “Ceremonies Performed on Crystal Instruments,” was suggested by the simultaneously hieratic and ritualistic, yet balletic and graceful character of the music— as if it were a sacred and commemorative, yet fleet dance elegantly performed in a distant place on tiny bars of glass and quartz.

  • A dinner with death

    Wajdi Abou Diab

    Wajdi Abou Diab is a Lebanese composer of classical contemporary music, musicologist, educator, and conductor who believes in music as a way to build our cultural future while keeping us connected to our cultural history.

    "A dinner with death" is a one-minute piece for Toy Piano, describing the emotional and mental state of a person who decides to confront his fear from death and imagines a rendezvous with the death himself on a dinner for a deep frank talk.

  • Alien Language

    Alp Durmaz

    Alp Durmaz was born in İstanbul in 1974 and graduated from Bilkent University Composition Department in 2000. My works were performed in Turkey, United States, France, Italia, Ukraine, and Portugal. Five of my works won various prizes in 2010, 2011, and 2016.

    The piece imitates a repetitive and incompressible language which is assumed to be alien.

  • Scherzando

    Ulf Grahn

    Ulf Grahn, award wining composer In 1973 he founded the Contemporary Music Forum, in Washington, D.C. and served as its Program Director until 1984. During 1988-90 he was Artistic and Managing Director of the Music at Lake Siljan Festival, Sweden.Currently working as a full time composer.

    A short little piece were the opening motif gives the material for the rest of the piece. It's light in character with a slight teasing attitude.

  • Reflets dans un verre d'eau

    Satoru Ikeda

    …The ultra-expressive "Hataori"… review of his work included in an album for string orchestra which won the award for Best Classical Album of the Akademia Music Awards in 2021. He has won twenty awards and distinctions including the ISCM World New Music Days 2021 in Shanghai and Nanning (orchestra).

    This piece is composed of inverse symmetrical motifs and chords arranged around Middle B, which is the center note of the toy piano. As it's a very small, lovely instrument, the sound will be like reflections in a glass of water: "reflets dans un verre d'eau".

  • Microcosm

    Wenbin Lyu

    Recent Tanglewood fellow Wenbin Lyu is an award-winning US-based Chinese composer and guitarist. The composition written by Wenbin Lyu combines contemporary western techniques with ancient oriental culture. He seeks inspiration from nature, science, and video games. Lyu received his degrees from China Conservatory, NEC, and CCM.

    I was waiting for the new year after I composed this miniature on the last day of 2021. At this moment, I felt peaceful and relaxed. And I sit on my chair, randomly titled this piece Microcosm. Microcosm is only 1 minute in duration.

  • Haiku

    José Jesús Martínez-Espuig

    José Jesús Martínez-Espuig (Alcàsser-Spain, 1993) is a young composer who has studied at the Superior Conservatory of Music in Valencia and received classes from Claus Steffen-Mahnkopf, Ramon Lazkano, Agustí Charles among others. He has also received several awards including the first prize in the "International Antonin Dvorak Composition Competition".

    Haiku is a Japanese style of poetry based on writing 3 simple lines. This short piece tries to imitate this with very free music, suggestive harmonies and without a clearly defined pulse.

  • Halin sa Liso

    Maria Christine Muyco

    Maria Christine Muyco. Music composer and ethnomusicologist. Currently, she is a full professor of the University of the Philippines-College of Music and the former Chairperson of the Composition and Theory Department. She has written for various instrumental/vocal ensembles (including recycled materials) performed in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North American countries.

    Halin sa Liso’ (From the Seed) reverberates concepts of growth, germination, and even mutation. This reflects many realities of today such as the COVID virus spread and effects of human actions that lead to production, as well as destruction.

  • NDR-113

    Sergio Naddei

    Born in Naples, Sergio Naddei is guitarist, composer and digital artist. As a composer he wrote works for solo instruments and ensemble with and without electronics. He focused his work on the development of new digital instrument. Actually he teach guitar, composition and electronic music for the association Neaphonis

    NDR-113 for toy piano is inspired by the novel of Isaac Asimov, the story of a machine that decided to work in his own way, overcoming his developer's intentions

  • Sweet and Sour

    Ryan Charles Ramer

    Ryan Charles Ramer is a composer based in Cleveland, Ohio. Recent performances of his work includes 3 operas, a string symphony, several chamber works, 39 solo pieces, and over an hour of piano music. He has been an active member of the Cleveland Composers Guild since 2012.

    This piece was written to induce a reaction of synesthesia relating to sound and taste. Could the timbre of the toy piano along with a careful concoction of consonances and dissonances make the listener taste sweet and sour in their mouth?

  • Konnakol

    Volker Ignaz Schmidt

    Volker Ignaz Schmidt was born in 1971 in Germany. He studied computer science although his passion is music. Volker Ignaz Schmidt has composed solo works, chamber music, vocal pieces, orchestral music and conceptual music. He has written piano textbooks and he worked in school projects on contemporary music.

    Konnakol is the South Indian art of performing rhythms using spoken syllabels. Those spoken syllabels get combined with a simultaniously counting meter performed with the hands.In my piece I am using the following Konnakol syllabels: Da Ta-ka Ta-ka-di-mi Ta-ki-ta Ta-ki-ta Ta-ki-ta Ta-ki-ta di-mi

  • Evaporación detenida

    Juan María Solare

    Juan María Solare (b. 1966 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a pianist and composer. He is active primarily in Bremen (Germany), where he teaches at the Hochschule für Künste and at the University. Editor of four piano albums for Ricordi (Universal Music) and a fifth for Peters Verlag (Leipzig).

    This miniature presents, through sound, two opposing worlds. The volatile, the stable. The movement and the static. The flurries and the columns. The fragment of the poem that heads this work underlines the impossibility – and the wish – of opposing the ephemeral, of contradicting transience.

  • Hika (A Sad Song)

    Motohide Taguchi

    Motohide TAGUCHI has been active since 1999 when he received an honorable mention in the 16th Japan Society for Contemporary Music (JSCM) Award for Composers. With his deep interest in Japanese music, he has tried to explore to utilizing various elements of Japanese music into his works.

    The piece is written in a Japanese mode called In or Miyako-bushi with some transpositions. It's uneasy atmosphere reflects our lives in the era of the pandemic of the COVID-19.Because the instruments is originally made as a toy, it avoids too much complexity and virtuosity.