At her last count, Margaret Leng Tan owned 18 toy pianos – but these days she just settles for “lots and lots”. The 76-year-old musician, once labelled “the world’s first toy piano virtuoso” by the New York Times and “the formidable doyenne of the avant-garde” by the Washington Post, finds her pianos everywhere from garage sales to garbage cans. “I picked up a beautiful one from the garbage – the legs were missing but it was vintage and had a beautiful sound,” she says. Last year, a complete stranger even left a red one for her on her Brooklyn doorstep: “I have become a foundling hospital for orphan pianos.”
Her personal favourite in her collection is a vintage Schoenhut, which she deems “the Steinway of the toy piano world”.
