June 21: Garden of Memory Celebrated Summer Solstice Concert Back for 2024 – Presented by New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes
Garden of Memory Celebrated Summer Solstice Concert Back for 2024
Photo credit: Top: Chris Tompkins;
Bottom Left: John Sanborn; Bottom Middle: Michael Zelner; Bottom Right: John Sanborn
Garden of Memory
Celebrated Summer Solstice Concert Back for 2024
Presented by New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes
Celebrating Bay Area Performers and Composers
Friday, June 21, 2024, 5-9pm
Chapel of the Chimes | 4499 Piedmont Avenue | Oakland, CA
Parking is limited. Public transit and carpooling are recommended.
Tickets ($20 general, $15 students & seniors, $5 children 5-12)
available through Eventbrite.
No Tickets Sales On-Site; Online Sales Only
More information: www.gardenofmemory.com
Oakland, CA – On Friday, June 21, 2024 from 5-9pm, Garden of Memory – the beloved annual summer solstice celebration presented by New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes – returns to celebrate the longest day of the year with a rich variety of musical performances. Tickets, which will be available through online sales only, are limited to 2750. Though not required, masks are encouraged for indoor performances.
Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a walk-through fun house of musical and visual splendor” and by the East Bay Times as “the best party of the year,” this highly anticipated and locally renowned solstice concert features a cornucopia of performances happening simultaneously around the grounds of the Chapel of the Chimes. Composers, musicians, sound artists, and other performers present a variety of acoustic and electronic music, installations, and interactive events. Listeners are free to explore the multilevel labyrinth of interior gardens, cloisters, stairwells, fountains, alcoves, pools, and antechambers during the performances, each person crafting their own unique musical journey throughout the day.
Select highlights of programming and performers for 2024, with more artists to be announced:
Pianist Sarah Cahill will perform Mamoru Fujieda's Patterns of Plants
Pamela Z, a multimedia artist, composer, and pioneer of digital looping techniques
Kitka, acclaimed women's vocal ensemble
Harmonic Drift, featuring interactive gongs and found instruments
Evan Ziporyn GRAMMY-winning composer, conductor, clarinetist, collaborator, who will perform the West Coast premiere of a new work composed for him by Terry Riley
SORIAH (stage persona of Enrique Ugalde), an internationally-acclaimed throat singer and ritual artist
Additional artists to be featured in this year’s festivities, many of whom are known in the Bay Area, include: Sparrows & Ortolans - Laetitia Sonami & James Fei; Laura Inserra; Brian Baumbusch; Paul Dresher & Joel Davel; Liam Herb; Dylan Mattingly, Kitka; Orchestra Nostalgico; Cardew Choir; Dan Plonsey & friends; Randy Porter & Jennifer Ellis; Andy Meyerson; John Benson; Beth Custer, Will Bernard, & Stephen Kent; Sidney Chen; Gyan Riley; Monica Scott; The Mycos Project; Giacomo Fiore; Wendy Reid & Friends; Edward Schocker; Voicehandler-Jacob Heile & Danishta Rivero; Harmonic Drift; Roco Córdova & Adrián Montúfar; Sruti Sarathy; Tom Djll, Karen Stackpole, Cheryl Leonard; Kaitlin McSweeney; Regular Music; ROVA; Anne Hege; Silvia Matheus; Dean Santomieri, Cindy Sawprano, & Christina Braun .
Garden of Memory offers a unique and personal musical experience to every listener roving freely through the Chapel of the Chimes. Getting lost is part of the experience as guests climb up and down the three floors of this Oakland Historic Landmark building and its unique architectural elements, which rise into vaulted ceilings. Seamless in feel, there are three separate design sections created by four architects; Cunningham & Politeo 1909, Julia Morgan 1926-1951 (consulting until her retirement 1951), Aaron Green 1956-1986 and JST Architects 1986-1998. In the older section the complexity of chapels, columbaria, and mausoleum areas are adorned with murals, paintings, sculpture, mosaics, California tile and 16th century antiquities. All architectural and garden areas have excellent acoustics and are illuminated by gentle natural light, often through beautiful arrangements of stained glass.
Drawing crowds of over four thousand people in past years (including a large number of children), Garden of Memory has become a favorite summer solstice celebration for Bay Area audiences. Since the pandemic, the audience is now limited to 2750. Information about performances, directions, parking, accessibility, food/beverage, and is available at www.gardenofmemory.com.
Since 1996, New Music Bay Area, a nonprofit organization which provides opportunities and information to composers and performers of new music throughout the Bay Area, has hosted the Garden of Memory solstice concert every June 21st from 5pm-9pm. Board president Sarah Cahill came up with the idea after wandering into the Chapel of the Chimes, and now Cahill and Lucy Farber Mattingly organize the concert each year, in collaboration with the small board of New Music Bay Area and the Chapel of the Chimes.
Cahill recalls, “As I meandered around the building, I heard distant organ music, and tried to follow the sound to its source, through a labyrinth of magical gardens and gothic alcoves with the afternoon light filtering through stained glass. I imagined putting musicians all around this maze, so that when you turn a corner you might encounter a string quartet or an electronic music installation or a Georgian choir. So that's what we did.”
Chapel of the Chimes, the largest above-ground cemetery west of the Mississippi, started out as a street car station and became the California Memorial Crematorium and Columbarium in 1909. The property was expanded and transformed by Julia Morgan and later, Aaron Green – a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. The lobby and hallways feature artwork by Diego Rivera, a marble table top from the Medici family crest and a page from the Gutenberg Bible.
The facility’s numerous chapels, columbaria, and mausoleum areas are adorned with antiquities that date back to the 16th century. All architectural and garden areas have excellent acoustics and are illuminated by gentle natural light, often through beautiful arrangements of stained glass.
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).
Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival. Cahill also performed music from The Future is Female for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series.
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8-10 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
May 18: Pianists Sarah Cahill & Regina Myers Presented by New Performance Traditions in Duo Concert Program featuring Music for Four Hands and Two Pianos
Pianists Sarah Cahill & Regina Myers Presented by New Performance Traditions
Pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers
Presented by New Performance Traditions
Performing Music by Hanna Kulenty,
Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (transcribed by Jed Distler),
Mamoru Fujieda, Eleanor Alberga, Riley Nicholson, and Colin McPhee
Dresher Ensemble Studio | 2201 Poplar Street | Oakland, CA
Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 7pm
“Pianist Sarah Cahill commands a near-godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music” – NPR Music
www.sarahcahill.com | www.reginamusic.com
Oakland, CA – On Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 7pm, pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers will be presented together in concert at the Dresher Ensemble Studio (2201 Poplar Street). Cahill and Myers will perform a duo program featuring works for four hands and two pianos: Van by Hanna Kulenty, Tonk? by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (transcribed by Jed Distler), Sprites in a Large Camphor Tree by Mamoru Fujieda, 3-Day Mix by Eleanor Alberga, Up by Riley Nicholson, and Balinese Ceremonial Music by Colin McPhee. Nicholson will be present at the performance to speak about his work.
Cahill, known not only for her solo artistry but also her collaborative spirit, has a long and well-established relationship with fellow Bay Area musician Regina Myers. The two pianists have collaborated on many occasions, most recently for a duo performance at the 2023 Flower Piano festival, which The Rehearsal Studio wrote “deserved attentive listening.” It was at this performance that the two friends and colleagues gave the U.S. premiere of Mamoru Fujieda’s Sprites in a Large Camphor Tree. They also collaborated in 2022 on a performance which included the world premiere of Riley Nicholson’s Up –– a 35 minute work commissioned by Cahill and Myers.
Cahill has long been an enthusiastic supporter of Mamoru Fujieda’s work, playing a central role in the post-minimalist composer’s Pattern of Plants receiving a solo piano recording for the first time outside of Japan, when Cahill recorded the music on Pinna Records in 2014. Cahill’s performance on the recording was widely praised, with I Care If You Listen saying "Sarah Cahill expertly interprets and gives a clear voice to Fujieda's beautiful work," and The New York Times describing the music as “Delicate miniatures that unfold quietly and calmly.”
Jamaican-born, British composer Eleanor Alberga wrote 3-Day Mix in 1991. Alberga explains of her work 3-Day Mix: “As implied by the title, 3-Day Mix was written in 3 days when, with very short notice, an opportunity to compose a piano duet for a concert came about in 1991. This work…contains jazzy elements, but the melodic lines over ostinato figures appear in all my other ‘light’ works. It lasts about 9 minutes and is meant to be no more than a fun piece.”
Riley Nicholson says of his four-movement epic work: “Up’s one unifying theme is simply that: ‘up.’ The piece moves ‘up’ in so many directions: literally, opening with an upward motif that gets pinged between pianos in a groovy, dizzying counterpoint; gradually with increasing frequency moving up the circle of fifths; with upbeat syncopations and tempi; constantly one-upping itself with a burgeoning energy that trips over itself with virtuosic fits; and many other upward motions and themes. Up is a manic trip that both explores joyous energy and that darker underbelly of positivity when energy and motion become simply too much to be contained.”
Writer Jed Distler, who transcribed the version of Tonk to be performed in this program says of the piece: “Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn enjoyed playing impromptu piano duets in informal situations, which directly resulted in Tonk. Credited to both men but actually written by Strayhorn, they recorded it in 1945 as a piano duet and again in 1950, this time at two pianos. My two-piano transcription of Tonk was commissioned by Nurit Tilles and Edmund Niemann for Double Edge, and combines both recorded versions."
Polish composer Hanna Kulenty composed "VAN..." in 2014 at the request of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Warsaw on the occasion of the State Visit of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands. It premiered during the Warsaw Autumn Festival. "VAN..." playfully explores minimalist patterns during which the pianists' hands collide as they continue each other's patterns.
Colin McPhee (1900-1964) was both a composer and an academic. His musical style has come to be known for an acute sensitivity to specific timbres and an appreciation for complex rhythmic textures. A three movement work, each of the sections of Balinese Ceremonial Music were arranged between 1934 and 1938. The two pianos heard together in the music manifest a type of ringing –– much like the metallophones of the gamelan –– effortlessly imparting a sonic quality of the gamelan to the instrumental medium of the piano.
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF). Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
About Regina Myers: Regina performs as a solo artist and with ensembles around the Bay Area. She received a Bachelor's degree in Piano Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a Master's in Piano Performance and Literature from Mills College, where she focused on new and experimental music under the guidance of pianist Marc Shapiro, ensemble leader and composer Steed Cowart and percussion master William Winant. In 2004 she founded the concert series, and now ensemble, New Keys: New Keys' mission is to surface and promote the newest and most innovative music for the piano. We challenge composers to explore the vast untapped potential of the piano and strive to craft the experience of a piano recital as both captivating and approachable for our audience. Before going on hiatus to rapidly and accidentally expand her family, Regina proudly taught piano to beloved students for 17 years.
She has participated in the Hot Air, Switchboard, Garden of Memory Summer Solstice and SF Friends of Chamber Music SF Music Day music festivals and has had the honor of playing many concerts with the William Winant Percussion Group as well as the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. She can be heard on Luciano Chessa's album Petrolio, Danny Clay/Joseph Colombo LP (with New Keys) and on Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley on which she plays four-hand music by Terry Riley with her duo partner Sarah Cahill. Regina prides herself on expanding the reach of new music for piano by commissioning new works and organizing concerts for their premieres and recording. She relishes working with young and emerging composers as well as keeping seminal new music masterpieces alive.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, described by NPR Music as “command[ing] a near-godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music,” and pianist Regina Myers, are presented together in concert at the Dresher Ensemble Studio with pianist Regina Myers. Cahill and Myers will perform a concert program of various works for four hands and two pianos, including Van by Hanna Kulenty, Tonk by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (transcribed by Jed Distler), Sprites in a Large Camphor Tree by Mamoru Fujieda, 3-Day Mix by Eleanor Alberga, Up by Riley Nicholson, and Balinese Ceremonial Music by Colin McPhee. Riley Nicholson will be present at the performance to speak about his work.
Short description: Pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers are presented together in concert at The Dresher Ensemble Studio. The duo performance will include music by Hanna Kulenty, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (transcribed by Jed Distler), Mamoru Fujieda, Eleanor Alberga, Riley Nicholson, and Colin McPhee. Nicholson will be at the performance to speak about his work.
Concert details:
Who: Pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers
Presented by New Performance Traditions
What: Music by Hanna Kulenty, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (transcribed by Jed Distler), Mamoru Fujieda, Eleanor Alberga, Riley Nicholson, and Colin McPhee.
When: Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 7pm
Where: Dresher Ensemble Studio, 2201 Poplar Street, Oakland, CA 94607
Tickets and information: www.dresherensemble.org/performances
April 26: Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs Music by Women Composers from Around the Globe in The Future is Female – Presented by Detroit Institute of Arts Friday Night Live! Series
Pianist Sarah Cahill in The Future is Female Presented by Detroit Institute of Arts Friday Night Live! Series
Photo of Sarah Cahill by Miranda Sanborn available in high-resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/sarah-cahill
Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs Music by Women Composers
from Around the Globe in The Future is Female
Presented by Detroit Institute of Arts Friday Night Live! Series
Friday, April 26, 2024 from 7:00-8:30pm
Detroit Institute of the Arts | Rivera Court | 5200 Woodward Ave. | Detroit, MI
“a series distinctive for its finesse and conviction”
– Gramophone Magazine on The Future is Female
Watch Sarah Cahill’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert
Detroit, MI – On Friday, April 26, 2024 from 7:00-8:30pm, Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, will perform music from her ongoing project The Future is Female in a free concert presented by the Detroit Institute of the Arts as part of its Friday Night Live! series in DIA’s Rivera Court (5200 Woodward Ave.). The Future is Female is Cahill’s exploration of music for solo piano by women composers from the Baroque to the present day, which now includes more than 70 pieces from around the globe, some commissioned by Cahill as part of the project. This is her second time bringing music from The Future is Female to Detroit – she last performed a different selection of works at DIA in March 2019.
For this concert, Cahill will perform music for solo piano by women composers spanning from 1687 to 2020, encompassing the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern periods. Her program includes selections from Keyboard Suite in D minor (1687) by Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, Piano Poems (2020) by Regina Harris Baiocchi, “Le murmure des blés” from Au sein de la nature (1908) by Leokadiya Kashperova, Music for Piano (1989/1997) by Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Two Etudes, Op. 26 (1839) by Louise Farrenc; A Mother’s Sacrifice (1908) by Viola Kinney, Sonata No. 9, Op. 5 No. 3 (1811) by Hélène de Montgeroult, Valse Choro No. 2 (1965) by Adelaide Pereira da Silva, Hermit Thrush at Eve, Op. 92 No. 1 (1921) by Amy Beach, Troubled Water (1967) by Margaret Bonds, Rang de Basant (2012) by Reena Esmail, and Nocturne in B-flat Major (1819) by Maria Szymanowska.
Since her last visit to Detroit, Sarah Cahill has been featured performing music from The Future is Female in an NPR Tiny Desk concert as well as in eight-hour marathon performances at the Barbican Centre in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, both celebrating International Women’s Day. She has also brought the project to venues across the U.S. including Carolina Performing Arts in Chapel Hill, NC; Carlsbad Music Festival in San Diego, CA; the University of Iowa; Bowling Green New Music Festival in Ohio; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; North Dakota Museum of Art; the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York; the Newport Classical Music Festival in Rhode Island, and more.
In addition, Cahill recorded 30 works from The Future is Female on a three-volume set of albums released in 2022 and 2023 on the First Hand Records label, which included many world premiere recordings and was widely acclaimed by publications including in the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, BBC Music Magazine, International Piano, The Wire, Gramophone Magazine, and more. BBC Music Magazine reported, “the American pianist [Sarah Cahill] takes us on a chronological journey that zips around the world, stitching together contrasting styles into an enjoyable musical patchwork,” while New Music Buff notes the “impressive command of baroque, classical, romantic, and modern idioms” that Cahill brings to these recordings.
Listen to The Future is Female, Vols. 1-3 (First Hand Records):
Vol. 1: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol1
Vol. 2: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol2
Vol. 3: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol3
Sarah Cahill began working on The Future is Female in 2018. She says:
“For decades I had been working with many living American composers, including Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, Eve Beglarian, Mary D. Watkins, Julia Wolfe, Ursula Mamlok, Meredith Monk, Annea Lockwood, and many more, but I felt an urgent need to explore neglected composers from the past, and from around the globe. Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of color. It is still standard practice to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female, then, aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive . . . The possibilities are, in fact, limitless.”
More about Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).
Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival. Cahill also performed music from The Future is Female for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series.
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, will perform music from her ongoing project The Future is Female in a free concert presented by the Detroit Institute of the Arts as part of its Friday Night Live! Series. The Future is Female is Cahill’s exploration of music for solo piano by women composers from the Baroque to the present day, which includes more than 70 pieces from around the globe, some commissioned by or for Cahill as part of the project. Cahill will perform works by Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, Regina Harris Baiocchi, Leokadiya Kashperova, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Louise Farrenc, Viola Kinney, Hélène de Montgeroult, Adelaide Pereira da Silva, Amy Beach, Margaret Bonds, Reena Esmail, and Maria Szymanowska.
Short description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” (The New York Times), will perform music from her ongoing project The Future is Female in a free concert presented by the Detroit Institute of the Arts as part of its Friday Night Live! Series. The Future is Female is Cahill’s exploration of music for solo piano by women composers from the Baroque to the present day, which includes more than 70 pieces from around the globe. This concert will include music by Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre; Regina Harris Baiocchi, Leokadiya Kashperova, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Louise Farrenc, Viola Kinney, Hélène de Montgeroult, Adelaide Pereira da Silva, Amy Beach, Margaret Bonds, Reena Esmail, and Maria Szymanowska.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill
Presented by Detroit Institute of Arts, Friday Night Live! Series
What: Music by Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, Regina Harris Baiocchi, Leokadiya Kashperova, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Louise Farrenc, Viola Kinney, Hélène de Montgeroult, Adelaide Pereira da Silva, Amy Beach, Margaret Bonds, Reena Esmail, and Maria Szymanowska.
When: Friday, April 26, 2024 from 7:00-8:30pm
Where: Rivera Court, 5200 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48202
Tickets and information: www.dia.org/events/saturday-night-live-sarah-cahill-future-female
April 13: Pianist Sarah Cahill in The Future is Female Presented by the Boulanger Initiative and Strathmore – Performing as Part of WoCo Fest 2024: Evolve
Pianist Sarah Cahill in The Future is Female Presented by the Boulanger Initiative and Strathmore
Photo of Sarah Cahill by Kristen Wrzesniewski available in high-resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/sarah-cahill
Pianist Sarah Cahill in The Future is Female
Presented by the Boulanger Initiative and Strathmore
Performing as Part of WoCo Fest 2024: Evolve
Saturday April 13, 2024 at 6pm
Strathmore Mansion | 10701 Rockville Pike | Rockville, MD
More information
“Sarah Cahill plays a wide-ranging selection of music composed by women on the final volume of a series distinctive for its finesse and conviction.”
– Gramophone Magazine on The Future is Female
Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com
Watch Sarah Cahill’s NPR TIny Desk Concert
Rockville, MD – On Saturday, April 13, 2024 at 6pm, Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, is co-presented in concert by the Boulanger Initiative and Strathmore as part of WoCo Fest 2024: Evolve –– an annual multi-day Women Composers (WoCo) Festival, featuring works by women and gender-marginalized composers performed by local and nationally acclaimed performers. Cahill’s concert will be held at Strathmore Mansion (10701 Rockville Pike).
Nearly a year since the release of The Future is Female Vol. 3, At Play –– the final volume in the album trilogy counterpart to Cahill’s project The Future is Female –– the esteemed Bay Area pianist will perform a diverse program of works by an array of women composers who are featured as part of The Future is Female. The Future is Female is Cahill’s research and performance project, which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. Cahill’s three recordings of the same title encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe and include several newly commissioned works and world premiere recordings. Each of the albums was released on UK label First Hand Records.
The music Cahill has selected to perform during WoCo Fest 2024 spans almost 250 years and includes Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre’s Keyboard Suite in D minor (movements I, III, V, and VI) (1687); Hélène de Montgeroult’s Sonata No. 9, Op. 5 No. 3 (1811); Louise Farrenc’s Two Etudes, Op. 26 (1839); Leokadiya Kashperova’s Au sein de la nature (1910), movement III; Adelaide Pereira da Silva’s Valsa Choro No. 2 (1965); Troubled Water by Margaret Bonds (1967); and She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees by Theresa Wong (2019).
Cahill was recently featured in an NPR Tiny Desk concert performing music from The Future is Female - watch here.
Listen to The Future is Female, Vols. 1-3 (First Hand Records):
Vol. 1: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol1
Vol. 2: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol2
Vol. 3: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol3
Sarah Cahill began working on The Future is Female, which now encompasses more than 70 compositions, in 2018. “For decades I had been working with many living American composers, including Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, Eve Beglarian, Mary D. Watkins, Julia Wolfe, Ursula Mamlok, Meredith Monk, Annea Lockwood, and many more, but felt an urgent need to explore neglected composers from the past, and from around the globe,” she explains. “Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of color. It is still standard practice to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female, then, aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive, in any way, and the three albums in this series represent only a small fraction of the music by women which is waiting to be performed and heard. Since recording these three albums in August 2021, I’ve performed extraordinary music by Louise Farrenc, Maria Szymanowska, Helen Hopekirk, Dora Pejačević and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Reena Esmail, Arlene Sierra, Viola Kinney, Marion Bauer, and many other composers who should rightfully be included in this series. The possibilities are, in fact, limitless.”
Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival.
Of the mission and vision of the Boulanger Initiative and taking part in WoCo Fest by performing music from The Future is Female, Cahill says:
“It’s such a great honor to be part of WoCo Fest 2024. The Boulanger Initiative is engaged in such groundbreaking and important work, including their very valuable database of music by women and gender-marginalized composers – a resource that is being used widely in conservatories and music studios, for future generations. As these amazing composers are acknowledged, recognized, and performed, we can start achieving some equity and inclusion in concert programs, and the Boulanger Initiative has a vital role in that process.”
More about Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
About the Boulanger Initiative: Boulanger Initiative advocates for women and all gender marginalized composers. We foster inclusivity and representation to expand and enrich the collective understanding of what music is, has been, and can be. We promote music composed by women through performance, education, research, consulting, and commissions.
About Strathmore: Strathmore is a multidimensional creative anchor in the community, where everyone can connect with the arts and artists can explore their full potential. It is a 501(c) nonprofit serving the entire Washington, DC, region and the state of Maryland, with hundreds of performances, visual arts exhibitions, and education programs for diverse audiences on its Montgomery County campus and in the community each year.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, described by The New York Times as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde,” is co-presented in concert by the Boulanger Initiative and Strathmore, as part of WoCo Fest –– an annual, multi-day, Women Composers (WoCo) Festival, which features works by women and gender-marginalized composers performed by local and nationally-acclaimed performers. Cahill will perform a program featuring music from her project, The Future is Female, including works by Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, Hélène de Montgeroult, Louise Farrenc, Leokadiya Kashperova, Adelaide Pereira da Silva, Margaret Bonds, and Theresa Wong.
Short description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” (The New York Times), is co-presented by the Boulanger Initiative and Strathmore in The Future is Female, as part of WoCo Fest. Cahill’s performance will feature works by Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, Hélène de Montgeroult, Louise Farrenc, Leokadiya Kashperova, Adelaide Pereira da Silva, Margaret Bonds, and Theresa Wong.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill
Presented by the Boulanger Initiative and Strathmore
What: Music by several women composers, historical and living, from Cahill’s ongoing project, The Future is Female, as part of WoCo Fest 2024: Evolve
When: Saturday April 13, 2024 at 6pm
Where: Strathmore Mansion, 10701 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852
Tickets and information: www.boulangerinitiative.org/woco-fest-2024-evolve/saturday-mansion
Jan. 21: Pianist Sarah Cahill in The Future is Female Presented by Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts
Pianist Sarah Cahill in The Future is Female Presented by Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts
Featuring Music by Louise Farrenc, Fanny Mendelssohn, Emahoy Tsege Maryam Gebru, Margaret Bonds, Theresa Wong, and Regina Harris Baiocchi
Photo of Sarah Cahill by Kristen Wrzesniewski available in high-resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/sarah-cahill
Pianist Sarah Cahill in The Future is Female
Presented by Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts
Sunday, January 21, 2024 at 4pm
Grace Church | 17400 Bubbling Wells Rd. | Desert Hot Springs, CA
Free and Open to the Public - Donations Welcome
More information: www.dhsclassicalconcerts.org
“Sarah Cahill plays a wide-ranging selection of music composed by women on the final volume of a series distinctive for its finesse and conviction.”
– Gramophone Magazine on The Future is Female
Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com
Watch Sarah Cahill’s NPR TIny Desk Concert
Desert Hot Springs, CA – On Sunday, January 21, 2024 at 4pm, Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, is presented in concert by Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts. The performance will be held at Grace Church (17400 Bubbling Wells Rd.). The concert is free and open to the public but donations are welcome.
For the first time since the April 28, 2023 release of The Future is Female Vol. 3, At Play –– the last volume in the album trilogy counterpart to Cahill’s project The Future is Female –– the Bay Area pianist will perform a diverse program of works by several composers featured as part of The Future is Female. The Future is Female is a research and performance project, which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe and include many new commissioned works and world premiere recordings. Cahill has also released a three-volume series of recordings of the same name on First Hand Records.
The concert will include excerpts from Keyboard Suite in D minor (1687) by Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Two Etudes, Op. 26 (1839) by Louise Farrenc, Lieder Op. 8, Nos. 1 and 3 (1846) by Fanny Mendelssohn, Presentiment by Emahoy Tsege Maryam Gebru, Troubled Water (1967) by Margaret Bonds, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees (2019) by Theresa Wong, and Piano Poems (2020) Regina Harris Baiocchi. In July 2023, Cahill performed excerpts from Baiocchi’s Piano Poems and Emahoy Tsege Maryam Gebru’s Presentiment as part of a NPR Tiny Desk Concert featuring works from her project The Future is Female - watch here.
Listen to The Future is Female, Vols. 1-3 (First Hand Records):
Vol. 1: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol1
Vol. 2: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol2
Vol. 3: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol3
Sarah Cahill began working on The Future is Female, which now encompasses more than 70 compositions, in 2018. “For decades I had been working with many living American composers, including Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, Eve Beglarian, Mary D. Watkins, Julia Wolfe, Ursula Mamlok, Meredith Monk, Annea Lockwood, and many more, but felt an urgent need to explore neglected composers from the past, and from around the globe,” she explains. “Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of color. It is still standard practice to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female, then, aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive, in any way, and the three albums in this series represent only a small fraction of the music by women which is waiting to be performed and heard. Since recording these three albums in August 2021, I’ve performed extraordinary music by Louise Farrenc, Maria Szymanowska, Helen Hopekirk, Dora Pejačević and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Reena Esmail, Arlene Sierra, Viola Kinney, Marion Bauer, and many other composers who should rightfully be included in this series. The possibilities are, in fact, limitless.”
Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival.
Of collaborating with Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts and performing works from The Future is Female now that her album trilogy has been completed and released, Cahill says:
"It's such an honor to be part of Danny Holt's Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts series. We've been friends and colleagues for more than twenty years, and I'm looking forward to our animated conversations about new music. I'm excited to be sharing music by women from 1687 onwards, including pieces I commissioned from Theresa Wong and Regina Harris Baiocchi. This is the first time I've played works from my project 'The Future is Female' since the last of a trilogy of albums was released earlier this year on the First Hand label, so it's especially meaningful to be revisiting this program."
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
About Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts: When concert pianist Danny Holt moved from Los Angeles to Desert Hot Springs, he noticed a hunger for more arts and culture in his newly adopted hometown. In 2014 he took it upon himself to do something about it, creating Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts to bring first-rate classical music to the city. The reaction from the community was overwhelming: there is an enthusiastic audience for live classical music in Desert Hot Springs!
In recent years the series has expanded its offerings, presenting concerts at numerous venues throughout the city and building on our partnership with the local schools. Now in our tenth season, our concerts feature established professional artists who are gifted at bringing classical music to life through their performances–inspiring and informing the audience about the music through their fun, insightful, and dynamic presentations. Admission to the concerts is free, thanks to underwriting from the City of Desert Hot Springs, local businesses and community organizations, and generous support from individual donors. Cash donations at the door at each concert are always appreciated, and are a crucial part of sustaining the concert series. (And now donations can be made online too!)
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianists Sarah Cahill, described by The New York Times as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde,” is presented by Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts. Cahill will perform a program featuring music from her project, The Future is Female: Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Two Etudes, Op. 26 (1839) by Louise Farrenc, Lieder Op. 8, Nos. 1 and 3 (1846) by Fanny Mendelssohn, Presentiment by Emahoy Tsege Maryam Gebru, Troubled Water (1967) by Margaret Bonds, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees (2019) by Theresa Wong, and Piano Poems (2020) Regina Harris Baiocchi. The performance is free and open to the public but donations are welcome.
Short Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” (The New York Times), is presented by Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts in The Future is Female. The free concert features works by Louise Farrenc, Fanny Mendelssohn, Emahoy Tsege Maryam Gebru, Margaret Bonds, Theresa Wong, and Regina Harris Baiocchi
Concert details:
Who: Pianists Sarah Cahill, Adam Sherkin, and Adrienne Kim
Presented by Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts
What: Music by Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Louise Farrenc, Fanny Mendelssohn, Emahoy Tsege Maryam Gebru, Margaret Bonds, Theresa Wong, and Regina Harris Baiocchi from Cahill’s ongoing project, The Future is Female
When: Sunday, January 21, 2024 at 4pm
Where: Grace Church, 17400 Bubbling Wells Rd., Desert Hot Springs, CA 92241
Tickets and information: https://www.dhsclassicalconcerts.org/
Jan. 7: Pianist Sarah Cahill Presented by Old First Concerts
Jan. 7: Pianist Sarah Cahill Presented by Old First Concerts
Performing Music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Amy Beach, Ruth Crawford, Terry Riley, Ann Southam, Evan Ziporyn
Photo of Sarah Cahill by Kristen Wrzesniewski available in high-resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/sarah-cahill
Pianist Sarah Cahill Presented by Old First Concerts
Performing Music by
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Amy Beach, Ruth Crawford,
Terry Riley, Ann Southam, Evan Ziporyn
Friday, January 7, 2024 at 2pm
Old First Church | 1751 Sacramento Street | San Francisco, CA
General Admission In-Person Tickets: $25
Senior (65+): $20
Full-time student w/ ID: $5
Livestream Suggested Donation: $20
More information:
www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performance/sarah-cahill-sunday-january-7-at-2-pm/
“Pianist Sarah Cahill commands a near-godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music”
– NPR Music
Watch Sarah Cahill’s NPR TIny Desk Concert
Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com
San Francisco, CA – On Sunday, January 7, 2024 at 2pm, Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, commences 2024 with a performance presented by Old First Concerts. Cahill will celebrate the beginning of a new year performing an extensive program of works from the 20th and 21st centuries, including Forest Scenes, Op. 66 by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1907); Hermit Thrush at Eve, Op.92 No. 1 (1921) by Amy Beach; Preludes 5, 6, 7, and 9 (1924) by Ruth Crawford; The Walrus in Memoriam (1993) by Terry Riley; Commotion Creek (2007) and Rivers Series 1 No. 1 (1979) by Ann Southam; and You Are Getting Sleepy (2015) by Evan Ziporyn.
The concert will be held at Old First Church (1751 Sacramento Street). General admission is $25. The concert will also be available to watch online as a livestream with a suggested donation of $20.
Praised by Time Out New York as “A brilliant and charismatic advocate for modern and contemporary composers,” Cahill is highlighting several composers on this program who are not only known for their pioneering work but are deeply respected musical figures who have impacted Cahill as a musician. Cahill has performed and recorded several works by Terry Riley, working with the esteemed composer/pianist since 1997. In 2015, Cahill commissioned several new solo piano works from many other accomplished composers and artists –– including Evan Ziporyn –– all of which she performed at a tribute concert honoring Riley for his eightieth birthday. Works by Amy Beach, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and Ann Southam are all highlighted as part of Cahill’s project, The Future is Female. Cahill and Evan Ziporyn have collaborated on many occasions, including on a critically acclaimed recording of Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan released in 2021 and made commercially available through the CMA’s Recorded Archive Editions.
Cahill says of starting the new year with a return to Old First Concerts and the music on this adventurous, contrast driven program:
"Old First Concerts is a Bay Area treasure, and I've been fortunate to play regularly on the series for the past 25 years. They have always encouraged exploration, innovation, and creative programming. Over the years I've enjoyed combining early 20th century compositions and newer works, which speak to each other across the decades, and also revisiting favorites while learning new repertoire. I'm obsessed with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Forest Scenes, with its love story of a Forest Maiden and a Phantom. Ruth Crawford and Ann Southam have been favorites for thirty years now. Pianist Matt Bengtson recently introduced me to Amy Beach's Hermit Thrush at Eve -- every pianist who hears it immediately wants to play it. Terry Riley and Evan Ziporyn are two composers I've been very lucky to work with, and always love revisiting their music. This program has a lot of stylistic contrast, and yet each work resonates with the possibilities of past and future."
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).
Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival. Cahill also performed music from The Future is Female for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series.
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
About Old First Concerts: Since its founding in 1970, Old First Concerts has grown to be an important part of the San Francisco cultural landscape. In a beautiful historic space with excellent acoustics, Old First Concerts presents rich and diverse high-quality concert experiences of classical music, jazz and world music. We feature eclectic and adventurous programming including works and performances by women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community alongside more established classical music repertoire. Our audiences discover a like-minded community of music lovers eager to explore the energy and excitement of the new music and performers of today, re-engage with old favorites, and help build the musical culture in San Francisco by supporting local musicians. Many of our concerts include our Hamburg Steinway concert grand piano, a favorite of local pianists. The piano is meticulously maintained by David Love (www.davidlovepianos.com).
All concerts are held at the Old First Church, home to an affirming and welcoming congregation with a long history of social activism, located on the corner of Sacramento Street and Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. Please note that Old First Concerts is a completely separate 501(c)3 organization with no religious affiliation and we strive to feature music that is welcoming and inclusive to all people regardless of their race, culture, gender identity, sexuality, age or any other identifying characteristic.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianists Sarah Cahill, described by The New York Times as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde,” is presented by Old First Concerts in a performance of music from the 20th and 21st centuries. Cahill will commemorate the start of 2024 with a concert program featuring Forest Scenes, Op. 66 by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1907); Hermit Thrush at Eve, Op.92 No. 1 (1921) by Amy Beach; Preludes 5, 6, 7, and 9 (1924) by Ruth Crawford; The Walrus in Memoriam (1993) by Terry Riley; Commotion Creek (2007) and Rivers Series 1 No. 1 (1979) by Ann Southam; and You Are Getting Sleepy (2015) by Evan Ziporyn. In addition to an in-person performance, the concert will be available for live stream.
Short description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” (The New York Times), is presented by Old First Concerts in a performance featuring music of the 20th and 21st centuries. The program includes works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Amy Beach, Ruth Crawford, Terry Riley, Ann Southan, and Evan Ziporyn.
Concert details:
Who: Pianists Sarah Cahill, Adam Sherkin, and Adrienne Kim
Presented by Old First Concerts
What: Music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Amy Beach, Ruth Crawford, Terry Riley, Ann Southam, and Evan Ziporyn
When: Sunday, January 7, 2024 at 2pm
Where: Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA 94109
Tickets and information: www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performance/sarah-cahill-sunday-january-7-at-2-pm/
Pianists Sarah Cahill, Adam Sherkin, and Adrienne Kim Presented by Piano Lunaire on December 9th
Pianists Sarah Cahill, Adam Sherkin, and Adrienne Kim Presented by Piano Lunaire in COMPOSERS IN PLAY VI: Portrait of a Canadian Minimalist Performing the Music of Ann Southam
Saturday, December 9, 2023 at 8pm at the Tenri Cultural Institute
Pianists Sarah Cahill, Adam Sherkin, and Adrienne Kim
Presented by Piano Lunaire in
COMPOSERS IN PLAY VI: Portrait of a Canadian Minimalist
Performing the Music of Ann Southam
Saturday, December 9, 2023 at 8pm
Tenri Cultural Institute | 43 W. 13th St. | New York, NY 10011
Tickets and more information:
www.pianolunaire.org/composersinplay
“Pianist Sarah Cahill commands a near-godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music”
– NPR Music
Sarah Cahill | Adrienne Kim | Adam Sherkin
New York, NY – On Saturday, December 9, 2023 at 8pm, “sterling pianist” (The New York Times) Sarah Cahill will be presented in concert by Piano Lunaire alongside pianists Adrienne Kim and Adam Sherkin (Artistic Director of Piano Lunaire) at the Tenri Cultural Institute (43 W. 13th St.). This concert, titled Portrait of a Canadian Minimalist, is the sixth installment in the Composers in Play series presented by Piano Lunaire.
The three pianists will perform a program highlighting the work of Canadian composer Ann Southam. Cahill will give the New York premiere of Commotion Creek (2007) and perform Glass Houses No. 5 and No.7 (1981) and Rivers Series 1 No. 1 and Rivers Series 2 No. 7 (1979). Sherkin will give the New York premieres of Fiddle Creek (2008), Pond Life III (2008), Fidget Creek (2008) and Pond Life IV (2008). Kim and Sherkin will also be performing original works by Sherkin, with Sherkin giving the U.S. premiere of his work, This Constant Song (Homage to Southam). Kim will also perform Franz Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade (arr. by Franz Liszt) (1814) and Southam’s Remembering Schubert (1993).
An unlikely champion of the Minimalist aesthetic, Southam worked tirelessly throughout her career, experimenting with style and structure, always staying true to her own voice and musicality. Later in life, as she embraced minimalism - particularly at the keyboard - she navigated her own brand of lyricism, intimacy and efficiency of line not only as feminist, but as an individual artist born of unquestionably North American sensibilities. She advocated for women in the arts and cultivated her own – very unique – career, all the while cohabitating a compositional world heavily dominated by men. CBC Producer Eitan Cornfield once said: “Ann Southam blasts the stereotype of the Canadian composer. She is proudly, politically female, in a stuffy male universe.”
In 2023, now thirteen years after her death, she is revered more than ever. This performance celebrates the major piano cycles Southam wrote over a late twenty-year span, forming her final creative period: Glass Houses, Rivers and Pond Life. These works are the most popular of Ann Southam’s cycles to be sold in print and be performed.
Of collaborating with Cahill for this program honoring Ann Southam, Sherkin says:
“We are honored to be collaborating with Sarah Cahill on this exciting presentation of Ann Southam’s piano music. Cahill is among the most sensitive proponents of Southam’s catalogue, particularly here in the US. Her dedication to Southam’s art has yielded expert renditions, both on stage and in the recording studio. Additionally, Cahill’s career has seen dynamic partnerships with celebrated American minimalist composers, offering a unique depth of understanding when performing Southam. This exceptional profile of West Coast meeting a Canadian sensibility, is ideal for contextualizing Southam in a dynamic new perspective for 2023. It is our hope that fresh audiences will come to discover and appreciate Ann Southam’s work, both at the piano and beyond.”
Of Ann Southam’s music and the works she’ll be performing in this concert, Kim says:
“Ann Southam’s approach to minimalism speaks to me on so many levels. She wanted to shine a light on the repetitive and meditative qualities of so-called ‘women’s work’, the daily work of mending and sewing, that was so important and beautiful but often unnoticed. There is something about the work done by hands, whether holding a needle or playing the piano, that allows contemplation and rumination and the deepest exploration. In this program, I’m weaving together a transcription of one of Franz Schubert’s most famous songs - portraying the innermost thoughts of a woman sitting at a spinning wheel, with Ann Southam’s “Remembering Schubert”, and pairing these with two gorgeous pieces by Adam Sherkin, which seem to me to be of a similar handicraft, though across centuries.”
Cahill says of this special performance dedicated to Ann Southam’s work and performing alongside Kim and Sherkin:
“It’s a great honor to be joining two esteemed colleagues, Adam Sherkin and Adrienne Kim, for this special celebration of Ann Southam’s music. Adam has an especially close relationship to Southam’s music, through his extensive research and deep understanding of her work, and as a fellow Canadian composer. For a few decades now, Southam has been one of my favorite composers to play, but Adam encouraged me to explore more of her work, for which I’m very grateful. Southam is often left out of the history books and lists of great minimalist composers, so this concert presented by Piano Lunaire is particularly meaningful, to introduce her to new audiences and generate more interest in her extraordinarily profound and transcendent music.”
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF). Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
About Adrienne Kim: Pianist Adrienne Kim has performed in Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Bargemusic, Symphony Hall, Phillips Gallery and Ravinia's Rising Stars series in Chicago. She has been soloist with the Central Philharmonic Orchestra of Beijing, and the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Mexico among others. Adrienne was a member of Chamber Music Society Two, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's two-year residency program. She is the pianist of the Alcott Trio and a founding member of the New York Chamber Music Co-Op. She performs regularly as a member of the Bronx Arts Ensemble and participated in the National Endowment for the Arts/Chamber Music America Rural Residency. She has recorded for the Koch, Centaur, Capstone, Albany and Innova labels. Her newest recording of solo piano and chamber works by the composer Ilari Kaila, with the Aizuri Quartet and flutist Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, was released last year on Innova Recordings.
Adrienne is on the faculty of Mannes College and heads the Secondary Piano department there. She recently joined the faculty of Manhattan School of Music Pre-College and Interharmony Music School. She also teaches at Kinhaven’s Young Artist Seminar and taught at the senior session for 12 summers. She is the founder and director of Wild Plums Recording Retreat, a boutique festival in Vermont devoted to the art of recording, and ScherziMusic Academy, which offers online workshops in piano and composition. She studied at Indiana University and Manhattan School of Music as a student of Menahem Pressler and Leon Fleisher.
About Adam Sherkin: Acclaimed for “dazzling displays of hand and ear virtuosity” (Opus One), “technical prowess and uncommon lyricism” (Musical Toronto), Adam Sherkin is a dynamic artist who commands a multi-dimensional approach to performance and composition. Admired for innovative programming and engaging virtuosity, Sherkin has performed at significant venues throughout Canada, the United States and Britain. His solo repertoire features music from the Baroque to present-day, with a specialization in keyboard works from North America (including his own). Recently, Sherkin’s music has been premiered in Mexico, the United States, the Netherlands and Asia. In 2018, Adam Sherkin founded “Piano Lunaire,” a new-gen organization that serves as platform for contemporary performances, houses a record label and collaborates with the new music community at large. Sherkin’s recordings are available on all major streaming services; he currently resides in New York City.
About Piano Lunaire: Innovating, Piano-Side, since 2018: Founded in October 2018 under a full Hunter's Moon, Piano Lunaire is a contemporary classical music organization based in New York and Toronto, pursuing the presentation of artistic excellence in the 21st Century. The company’s portfolio is three-fold: we produce monthly full moon performances, house a record label, and collaborate with the musical community at large, in capacity of both fundraiser and pedagogical platform.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianists Sarah Cahill, described by The New York Times as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde,” Adam Sherkin, and Adrienne Kim are presented in concert by Piano Lunaire. Cahill will perform several selections by composer Ann Southam, as part of a program titled: Portrait of a Canadian Minimalist. The concert will also feature original works by Sherkin –– including the U.S. premiere of This Constant Song (Homage to Southam) – as well as music by Franz Schubert.
Short description: Pianists Sarah Cahill, “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” (The New York Times), Adam Sherkin, and Adrienne Kim, are presented by Piano Lunaire. The program features works by Ann Southam, Adam Sherkin, and Franz Schubert.
Concert details:
Who: Pianists Sarah Cahill, Adam Sherkin, and Adrienne Kim
Presented by Piano Lunaire
What: Music by Ann Southam, Adam Sherkin, and Franz Schubert
When: Saturday, December 9, 2023 at 8pm
Where: Tenri Cultural Institute, 43 W. 13th St., New York, NY 10011
Tickets and information: www.pianolunaire.org/composersinplay
Pianist Sarah Cahill in an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert Performs Music from The Future is Female Album Trilogy on First Hand Records
Pianist Sarah Cahill performs in an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert with music from The Future Is Female.
Photo credit: Michael Zamora
Pianist Sarah Cahill in an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Featuring Music from Sarah Cahill’s
The Future is Female Album Trilogy on First Hand Records
“Sarah Cahill plays a wide-ranging selection of music composed by women on the final volume of a series distinctive for its finesse and conviction.”
– Gramophone Magazine on The Future is Female
Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, recorded a NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert in July 2023, which premieres today. Cahill performed selections by composers highlighted on the three volumes of her album trilogy, The Future is Female –– the recorded counterparts to her ongoing curation project of the same name. The concert is available for viewing via NPR Music –– watch here.
The Future is Female is a three-volume series which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe and include many new commissioned works and world premiere recordings.
Listen to The Future is Female, Vols. 1-3 (First Hand Records):
Vol. 1: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol1
Vol. 2: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol2
Vol. 3: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol3
“It was an incredible honor to perform in the iconic Tiny Desk series,” says Sarah Cahill. “I've admired the crew there for many years, and they were so welcoming. It was deeply meaningful to be in that legendary space where some of my favorite musicians have performed.”
NPR Music producer Tom Huizenga writes, “Pianist Sarah Cahill commands a near godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music. She's commissioned dozens of new works from today's top composers including John Adams, Julia Wolfe and Terry Riley. But when she sat down at the piano behind Bob Boilen's desk, she was focused not so much on new music but instead the plight of women composers. . . For this performance, she offers a sampler of The Future is Female, her multi-volume project that collects piano music by a staggeringly wide swath of women composers over a four-century span."
For her NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert, Cahill performed Czech composer Vítězslava Kaprálová’s April Prelude No. 1; Ethiopian nun and composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s Presentiment; Sarabande and Gigue from French Baroque era composer Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s Suite No. 1; and "a candle burns time" from American composer Regina Harris Baiocchi’s Piano Poems, written for Cahill in 2020. (Presentiment is included courtesy of the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation, a self-financing non-profit that funds music education for underserved children in the U.S and Ethiopia.)
Sarah Cahill began working on The Future is Female, which now encompasses more than 70 compositions, in 2018. “For decades I had been working with many living American composers, including Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, Eve Beglarian, Mary D. Watkins, Julia Wolfe, Ursula Mamlok, Meredith Monk, Annea Lockwood, and many more, but felt an urgent need to explore neglected composers from the past, and from around the globe,” she explains. “Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of color. It is still standard practice to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female, then, aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive, in any way, and the three albums in this series represent only a small fraction of the music by women which is waiting to be performed and heard. Since recording these three albums in August 2021, I’ve performed extraordinary music by Louise Farrenc, Maria Szymanowska, Helen Hopekirk, Dora Pejačević and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Reena Esmail, Arlene Sierra, Viola Kinney, Marion Bauer, and many other composers who should rightfully be included in this series. The possibilities are, in fact, limitless.”
Cahill’s recent performances of The Future is Female include concerts presented by The Barbican, National Gallery of Art, Carolina Performing Arts, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival.
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF). Her discography includes more than twenty albums on the First Hand Records, New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
Annual "Garden of Memory" Summer Solstice Concert Returns for 2023 Presented by New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes
“Garden of Memory”
Annual Summer Solstice Concert Returns for 2023
Presented by New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes
Featuring Bay Area performers and composers
Wednesday, June 21, 2023, 5-9pm
Chapel of the Chimes
4499 Piedmont Avenue | Oakland, CA
“Garden of Memory”
Annual Summer Solstice Concert Returns for 2023
Presented by New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes
Featuring Bay Area performers and composers
Wednesday, June 21, 2023, 5-9pm
Chapel of the Chimes
4499 Piedmont Avenue | Oakland, CA
Parking is limited. Public transit and carpooling are recommended. No ticket sales at the door.
Tickets ($20 general, $15 students & seniors, $5 children 5-12) available through Eventbrite.
More information: bit.ly/gardenofmemory2023
Oakland, CA – On Wednesday, June 21, 2023 from 5 to 9pm, Garden of Memory –– the annual summer solstice celebration presented by New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes –– returns for an evening of musical performance. Tickets, which will be available through online sales only, are limited to 2500. Though not required, masks are encouraged for indoor performances.
At this popular solstice concert, described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a walk-through fun house of musical and visual splendor” and by the East Bay Times as “the best party of the year,” the program features concurrent performances in different parts of the building by Bay Area composers, musicians, sound artists, and other performers presenting a variety of acoustic and electronic music, installations, and interactive events. The audience is free to explore the multilevel labyrinth of interior gardens, cloisters, stairwells, fountains, alcoves, pools, and antechambers during the performances.
Select highlights of programming and performers for 2023:
Pianist Sarah Cahill will perform Ballade by the late Kaija Saariaho, who passed away on June 2; excerpts from Birds and Insects by Arlene Sierra; and Kotekan from Vivian Fung's Glimpses
Pamela Z, a multimedia artist, composer, and pioneer of digital looping techniques
The Cornelius Cardew Choir, a Bay Area-based vocal performance ensemble specializing in experimental music
Theresa Wong, an internationally-renowned composer, cellist, and vocalist with Bay Area composer, vocalist, producer and improviser Roco Córdova
SORIAH (stage persona of Enrique Ugalde), an internationally-acclaimed throat singer and ritual artist
Additional artists to be featured for 2023, many of whom are known around the Bay Area, include: Beth Custer, Guillermo Gallindo and Andy Meyerson, Nico Simonian, Paul Dresher, Duo B: Lisa Mezzacappa and Jason Levis, Karen Stackpole and Krys Bobrowski, Randy Porter and Friends, Orchestra Nostalgico, Dan Plonsey and Friends, Jon Raskin, Gino Robair and Steve Adams, and many others.
Garden of Memory offers a unique and personal musical experience to every listener roving freely through the Chapel of the Chimes. Getting lost is part of the experience as guests climb up and down the three floors of this Oakland Historic Landmark building and its unique architectural elements, which rise into vaulted ceilings. Seamless in feel, there are three separate design sections created by four architects; Cunningham & Politeo 1909, Julia Morgan 1926-1951 (consulting until her retirement 1951), Aaron Green 1956-1986 and JST Architects 1986-1998. In the older section the complexity of chapels, columbaria, and mausoleum areas are adorned with murals, paintings, sculpture, mosaics, California tile and 16th century antiquities. All architectural and garden areas have excellent acoustics and are illuminated by gentle natural light, often through beautiful arrangements of stained glass.
Drawing crowds of over four thousand people in past years (including a large number of children), Garden of Memory has become a favorite summer solstice celebration for Bay Area audiences. Since the pandemic, the audience is now limited to 2500. Information about performances, directions, parking, accessibility, food/beverage, and is available at www.gardenofmemory.com.
About New Music Bay Area: Since 1996, New Music Bay Area, a nonprofit organization which provides opportunities and information to composers and performers of new music throughout the Bay Area, has hosted the Garden of Memory solstice concert every June 21st from 5pm-9pm. Board president Sarah Cahill came up with the idea after wandering into the Chapel of the Chimes, and now Cahill and Lucy Farber Mattingly organize the concert each year, in collaboration with the small board of New Music Bay Area and the Chapel of the Chimes. Cahill recalls, “As I meandered around the building, I heard distant organ music, and tried to follow the sound to its source, through a labyrinth of magical gardens and gothic alcoves with the afternoon light filtering through stained glass. I imagined putting musicians all around this maze, so that when you turn a corner you might encounter a string quartet or an electronic music installation or a Georgian choir. So that's what we did.”
About Chapel of the Chimes: Chapel of the Chimes, the largest above-ground cemetery west of the Mississippi, started out as a street car station and became the California Memorial Crematorium and Columbarium in 1909. The property was expanded and transformed by Julia Morgan and later, Aaron Green – a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. The lobby and hallways feature artwork by Diego Rivera, a marble table top from the Medici family crest and a page from the Gutenberg Bible.
The facility’s numerous chapels, columbaria, and mausoleum areas are adorned with antiquities that date back to the 16th century. All architectural and garden areas have excellent acoustics and are illuminated by gentle natural light, often through beautiful arrangements of stained glass.
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF). In May 2023, Cahill premiered Viet Cuong's new piano concerto, Stargazer, with the California Symphony.
Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts presented by The Barbican, Carolina Performing Arts, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival.
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Cahill's latest album, The Future is Female, Vol. 3, At Play, was released in April 2023 on First Hand Records. The Future is Female is a three-volume series, which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day.
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
Pianist Sarah Cahill's The Future is Female, "At Play," - Final of Three Volumes Out on First Hand Records - Music by 30 Women Composers from Around the Globe
Pianist Sarah Cahill's New Album Out TodayThe Future is Female, Vol. 3, At Play
Third of a Three-Volume Series Featuring 30 Solo Piano Works by Women Composers from Around the Globe
Pianist Sarah Cahill's New Album Out Today
The Future is Female, Vol. 3, At Play
Third of a Three-Volume Series Featuring 30 Solo Piano Works by Women Composers from Around the Globe
Available Today via First Hand Records
“Here, then, is an alternative history of solo piano music – and one that's delivered with real conviction by pianist Sarah Cahill.” – BBC Music Magazine
“This disc is a revelation, and is wholeheartedly recommended.”
RECOMMENDED, ‘Recording of the Month’ – MusicWeb International
Today, April 28, 2023, pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, releases her new album, The Future is Female, Vol. 3, At Play, on First Hand Records. The Future is Female is a three-volume series, which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe and include many new commissioned works and world premiere recordings.
The Future is Female, Vol. 3, At Play features works by Hélène de Montgeroult, Cecile Chaminade, Grażyna Bacewicz, Frangiz Ali-Zadeh, Chen Yi, Pauline Oliveros, Hannah Kendall, Aida Shirazi, and Regina Harris Baiocchi. This album, centered around the theme of play, concludes the three volume collection. On Wednesday, March 8, 2023 –– in honor of International Women’s Day –– Cahill will give a four-hour performance of The Future is Female, presented by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
In March of 2022, coinciding with the release of the first volume –– The Future is Female, Vol. 1, In Nature –– and in celebration of International Women’s Day, Cahill gave a marathon performance of The Future is Female presented by the Barbican Centre at the Barbican Conservatory. Vol. 1 In Nature features music by Anna Bon, Fanny Mendelssohn, Teresa Carreño, Leokadiya Kashperova, Fannie Charles Dillon, Vítězslava Kaprálová, Agi Jambor, Eve Beglarian, Deirdre Gribbin, Mary D. Watkins. The second album in the series, The Future is Female Vol. 2, The Dance, features works by Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Clara Schumann, Germaine Tailleferre, Zenobia Powell Perry, Madeleine Dring, Betsy Jolas, Elena Kats-Chernin, Meredith Monk, Gabriela Ortiz, and Theresa Wong.
Since the first album in The Future is Female trilogy, “In Nature” –– an album Classical-Notes describes as presenting “exemplary performances” –– listeners have wholeheartedly embraced Cahill’s celebration of historical and living women composers. BBC Music Magazine writes: “As with the fine first instalment, the American pianist [Sarah Cahill] takes us on a chronological journey that zips around the world, stitching together contrasting styles into an enjoyable musical patchwork.” Musicweb International calls Vol. 2, The Dance “a revelation,” while New Music Buff notes the “impressive command of baroque, classical, romantic, and modern idioms” that Cahill brings to both “In Nature” and “The Dance.”
Cahill started working on her project, The Future is Female, which now encompasses more than 70 compositions, in 2018. “For decades I had been working with many living American composers, including Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, Eve Beglarian, Mary D. Watkins, Julia Wolfe, Ursula Mamlok, Meredith Monk, Annea Lockwood, and many more, but felt an urgent need to explore neglected composers from the past, and from around the globe,” she explains. “Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of color. It is still standard practice to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female, then, aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive, in any way, and the three albums in this series represent only a small fraction of the music by women which is waiting to be performed and heard. Since recording these three albums in August 2021, I’ve performed extraordinary music by Louise Farrenc, Maria Szymanowska, Helen Hopekirk, Dora Pejačević and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Reena Esmail, Arlene Sierra, Viola Kinney, Marion Bauer, and many other composers who should rightfully be included in this series. The possibilities are, in fact, limitless. I am delighted to be working with First Hand Records on this three-album project, concluding with this third and final album, loosely based on the theme of ‘play’”.
Cahill has developed and performed The Future is Female as a flexible concert program, which she has been performing since the project’s inception. It has been presented as an evening-length recital performance and as a marathon performance and is ideal for concert halls, museums, and gallery spaces. The marathon performance duration is typically between four to seven hours, allowing audience members to sit and listen for any length of time, with the ability to come and go, as well as the ability to walk around the space. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts presented by The Barbican, the National Gallery of Art, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Festival.
The Future is Female, Vol. 3, At Play | Sarah Cahill, piano | First Hand Records | Available April 28, 2023
Recorded at St. Stephen’s Church, Belvedere, California, August 15–28, 2021 | Produced and recorded by Matt Carr
Hélène de Montgeroult (1764–1836)
Sonata No. 9, op. 5 no. 3 (1811) [19:52]
1. I. Allegro spiritoso [8:10]
2. II. Adagio non troppo [4:38]
3. III. Presto [6:57]
Cecile Chaminade (1857–1944)
4. Thème varié (1898) [5:01]
Grażyna Bacewicz (1909–1969)
5. Scherzo (1934) [7:08]
Chen Yi (b. 1953)
6. Guessing (1989)† [5:15]
Frangiz Ali-Zadeh (b. 1947)
7. Music for Piano (1989-1997) [9:32]
Pauline Oliveros (1932–2016)
8. Quintuplets Play Pen (2001)* [4:15]
Hannah Kendall (b. 1984)
On the Chequer'd Field Array'd (2013) [10:40]
9. I. Middlegame [2:35]
10. II. Mindplay [5:19]
11. III. Coda [2:40]
Aida Shirazi (b. 1987)
12. Albumblatt (2017)† [6:58]
Regina Harris Baiocchi (b. 1956)
Piano Poems (2020) * [13:25]
13. I. common things surprise [2:54]
14. II. cockleburs in wooly hair/tiny pond [3:54]
15. III. beatitudes [2:17]
16. IV. a candle burns time [4:12]
Total Time: [79:50]
Première recording *
Première commercial recordings †
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times and “a brilliant and charismatic advocate for modern and contemporary composers” by Time Out New York, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. Keyboard Magazine writes, “Through her inspired interpretation of works across the 20th and 21st centuries, Cahill has been instrumental in bringing to life the music of many of our greatest living composers.” She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).
Cahill enjoys working closely with composers, musicologists, and scholars to prepare scores for each performance. She researched and recorded music by prominent early 20th-century American modernists Henry Cowell and Ruth Crawford and commissioned a number of new pieces in tribute to their enduring influence. She has also premiered and recorded music by Leo Ornstein, Marc Blitzstein, and other 20th century mavericks.
Cahill has worked closely with composer Terry Riley since 1997, when she commissioned his four-hand piece Cinco de Mayo for a festival at Cal Performances celebrating Henry Cowell’s 100th birthday – the first of six works she has commissioned from him. For Riley’s 80th birthday, Cahill commissioned nine new works for solo piano in his honor and performed them with several of Riley’s own compositions at (Le) Poisson Rouge and Roulette in New York, MIT, the North Dakota Museum of Art, and other venues across the country. Sarah Cahill commissioned the late Frederic Rzewski to compose a substantial solo piano work in honor of Terry Riley’s 85th birthday.
Sarah Cahill also worked closely with Lou Harrison and has championed many of his works for piano. In 1997, Cahill was chosen to premiere his Festival Dance for two pianos with Aki Takahashi at the Cooper Union and worked with Harrison in rehearsals. She was also chosen to perform his Dance for Lisa Karon, discovered only a few years ago and not heard since its premiere in 1938, and she performed his Varied Trio, both piano concertos, and a number of solo and chamber works on her 2017 Lou Harrison tour celebrating his centennial year, with concerts in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Orlando, Miami, Hawaii, Tokyo and Fukuoka in Japan, and more. In Fall 2019, Sarah performed Lou Harrison's exuberant Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan in two Berkeley performances and at the ICA Boston. She also performed and recorded the work with Gamelan Galak Tika at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Cahill has performed classical and contemporary chamber music with artists and ensembles such as Jessica Lang Dance; pianists Joseph Kubera, Adam Tendler, and Regina Myers; violinist Stuart Canin; the Alexander String Quartet; New Century Chamber Orchestra; Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and many more. She also performs as a duo with violinist Kate Stenberg.
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Cahill's latest album, The Future is Female, Vol. 2, The Dance, was released in October 2022 on First Hand Records. The Future is Female is a three-volume series, which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe and include many new commissioned works and world premiere recordings. Cahill’s 2013 release A Sweeter Music (Other Minds) featured musical reflections on war by eighteen eloquent and provocative composer/activists. In 2015, Pinna Records released her two-CD set of Mamoru Fujieda’s Patterns of Plants, an extraordinary fusion of nature and technology created by identifying the musical patterns in the electrical impulses of plants. In September 2017, she released Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley, a box set tribute to Terry Riley, on Irritable Hedgehog Records. The four-CD set includes solo works by Riley, four-hand works with pianist Regina Myers, and world premiere recordings of commissioned works composed in honor of Riley’s 80th birthday.
Sarah Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. The program focuses on the relationships between classical music and new music, encompassing interviews with musicians and composers, historical performances, and recordings outside the mainstream. Cahill is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
The Future is Female Vol. 1 In Nature
“….delivered with real conviction by pianist Sarah Cahill”
(BBC Music Magazine)
The Future is Female Vol. 2 The Dance
“This disc is a revelation, and is wholeheartedly recommended.”
(MusicWeb International)