The River Pavilion at the REACH is transformed into an intimate cabaret space for enlightening talks, entertaining performances, and engaging conversations over drinks.

Margaret Leng Tan, Singaporean avant-garde pianist and toy pianist, is one of the most iconic performers of new American music. Her daring and disciplinary rigor is inherited from her mentor of 11 years, John Cage. The New Yorker calls her the “diva of avant-garde pianism.” The composers featured in the AND NO BIRDS SING program include John Cage, Erik Griswold, John Luther Adams, Annie Gosfield, Lois V Vierk, and Somei Satoh.

AND NO BIRDS SING is Tan’s personal endeavor to call attention to climate change and the dire consequences of remaining passive in the face of an unfolding universal catastrophe. The works on the program offer a chillingly persuasive commentary on the untrammeled fury of nature unleashed by civilization’s relentless, wanton defilement of the planet. The title “And No Birds Sing,” is the refrain from a John Keats poem, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” that Tan learned as a child growing up in colonial Singapore: “The sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing.”