May 9: Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs as Part of HEAR | TOGETHER: A Day-Long Outdoor Piano Concert Celebrating Bay Area Composers and Performers

[Note: Photo by Miranda Sanborn available in high resolution at www.jensenartists.com/sarah-cahill.]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press contact: Maggie Stapleton, Jensen Artists
646.536.7864 x2, maggie@jensenartists.com

Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs as Part of HEAR | TOGETHER: A Day-Long Outdoor Piano Concert Celebrating Bay Area Composers and Performers at Crowden Music Center

Sunday, May 9, 2021 from 10am – 7pm
Crowden Music Center | 1475 Rose St | Berkeley, CA
Outdoors at the corner of Rose and Sacramento Streets
Free Event. Advance reservations required via Eventbrite: bit.ly/HearTogetherTickets

Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com 

San Francisco, CA – On Sunday, May 9, 2021, Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, will perform an hour-long concert as part of HEAR | TOGETHER, a celebration of the return of live music safely, in the open air, and the diverse range of pianists and composers in the Bay Area. Running from 10am – 7pm and presented by a consortium of non- profit performing arts organizations – Alternating Currents, Crowden Music Center, Contemporaneous, and New Music Bay Area – the event will be an outdoor showcase at the Crowden Music Center (1475 Rose St | at the corner of Rose and Sacramento Streets) for pianists Allegra Chapman, Tammy Hall with singer Leberta Lorál, Marcos Silva, Dylan Mattingly, Elizabeth Dorman, Sarah Cahill, Monica Chew, and Robert Fleitz, and students from the Crowden Music Center.

Cahill’s program, beginning at 4pm, features the world premiere of selections from Frederic Rzewski’s Humanitas; unpublished works by Lou Harrison; Paul Dresher’s Two Entwined; as well as works from her project The Future is Female, including Mary Watkins’ Summer Days; Margaret Bonds’ Troubled Water; and Gabriela Lena Frank’s Barcarola Latinoamericana. Paul Dresher will be present to speak about his piece, Two Entwined. 

HEAR | TOGETHER is free and open to the public and observant of Covid-19 protocols. In light of the need for social distancing, reservations via Eventbrite will be required and limited to ensure the safety of performers and audience members. Free, reserved tickets are available at bit.ly/HearTogetherTickets. 

Performance Schedule for Sunday, May 9, 2021 at Crowden Music Center

10am: Crowden Music Center students

11am: Monica Chew
Book 1 of Etudes by Fred Onovwerosuoke
selections from Elena Kats-Chernin's Unsent Love Letters

12pm: Elizabeth Dorman
works by Timo Andres, Scarlatti, and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre 

1pm: Tammy Hall and Leberta Lorál
original compositions
American songbook standards
The Nearness of You and Blue Divine – an original by Tammy Hall (with Leberta Lorál)

2pm: Marcos Silva

3pm: Allegra Chapman
selections from J.S. Bach’s Partita in G Major, BMW 829 Reena Esmail Rang de Basant
selections from Harry Burleigh’s From the Southland selections from Grazyna Bacewicz’s 10 Studies for Piano

3:20pm: Dylan Mattingly
Improvisations

4pm: Sarah Cahill
selections from Frederic Rzewski’s Humanitas (premiere)
Mary Watkins’ Summer Days
Margaret Bonds Troubled Water
Gabriela Lena Frank’s Barcarola Latinoamericana
unpublished works by Lou Harrison
Paul Dresher’s Two Entwined

5 - 7pm: Robert Fleitz
Dylan Mattingly’s Achilles Dreams of Ebbets Field

Cahill’s recent and upcoming streaming speaking engagements have included a two-day discussion presented by the Boulanger Initiative, The Future is Female: In Conversation and Performance (watch online); a Piano Talk presented by the Ross McKee Foundation titled Challenging the Canon (watch online); a panel presented by American Composers Forum on Advocating for Gender Equity; a webinar presented by the San Francisco Symphony, Five Composers You Should Know (Who Happen to be Women) (November 10); At Home with Sarah Cahill a workshop presented by Amateur Music Network, where Cahill spoke about her life in new music and performed a short concert (watch online).

Her previous streamed performances during the pandemic have included the Bang on a Can Marathon in June 2020, a concert presented by Harrison House in Joshua Tree as part of Cahill’s residency there (watch online); a Piano Break recital presented by the Ross McKee Foundation, featuring the world premiere of Regina Harris Baiocchi’s Piano Poems, inspired by poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks and Richard Wright (watch online); a faculty performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, featuring the world premiere of Up for two pianos by Riley Nicholson, performed with Regina Myers (watch online); as well as appearances streamed by Musaics of the Bay, Old First Concerts, SFSymphony , and Community School of Music.

About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, recently called, “a brilliant and charismatic advocate for modern and contemporary composers” by Time Out New York, has commissioned and premiered over sixty compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Yoko Ono, 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).

Sarah Cahill has recently commissioned five new works for solo piano by composers Frederic Rzewski, Robert Pollock, Mary Watkins, Regina Harris Baiocchi, and Michelle Li. With violinist Kate Stenberg, she has commissioned composers Pamela Z, Roscoe Mitchell, and Maija Hynninen; and with Regina Myers, she has commissioned Riley Nicholson’s Up for two pianos.

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 20^th century mavericks.

Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, a ritual installation and communal feminist immersive listening experience featuring more than sixty compositions by women around the globe, ranging from the 18th century to the present day, including new commissioned works. Featured composers include Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Maria de Alvear, Galina Ustvolskaya, Franghiz Ali- Zadeh, Florence Price, Hannah Kendall, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Kui Dong, Meredith Monk, Vit´ezslava Kaprálová , Tania León, Fannie Charles Dillon, and many others. Cahill is performing this project in museums, galleries, and concert halls in current and future seasons. 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, Bowling Green New Music Festival, North Dakota Museum of Art, and Mayville State University.

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 80^th 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 has recently commissioned Frederic Rzewski to compose a substantial solo piano work in honor of Terry Riley’s upcoming 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, she performed Lou Harrison's exuberant Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan in two Berkeley performances.

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. Her 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 her latest album, 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. The Wall Street Journal praised Cahill’s performance on the album, saying “Ms. Cahill offers fluid interpretations of works from Mr. Riley’s copious solo piano output, as well as four-hand piano pieces, which she and Regina Myers play with impressive unity and an ear for Mr. Riley’s chameleon-like style morphing.”

Sarah 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. 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 piano faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory. She lives in Berkeley, California with her husband, video artist John Sanborn, and daughter. For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.

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