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Press Releases
Pianist Sarah Cahill Gives World Premiere Performance of Theresa Wong’s In Stillness I Sing with the San Francisco Girls Chorus at Bayview Opera House
Pianist Sarah Cahill Gives World Premiere Performance of Theresa Wong’s In Stillness I Sing with the San Francisco Girls Chorus at Bayview Opera House
Photo by Miranda Sanborn available in high resolution at www.jensenartists.com/sarah-
Sunday, March 13, 2022 at 3:00pm
Bayview Opera House | 4705 3rd St., San Francisco
Tickets and more Information:
https://www.sfgirlschorus.org/
“a persuasive advocate for American experimentalist composers”
– The Chicago Tribune
Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com
San Francisco, CA – On Sunday, March 13, 2022 at 3:00pm, pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, will give the world premiere performance of Theresa Wong’s In Stillness I Sing with the San Francisco Girls Chorus led by Valérie Sainte-Agathe, Artistic Director & Conductor at the Bayview Opera House (4705 3rd St). In Stillness I Sing is a new work commissioned by SFGC during the pandemic, for which singers from the chorus’ Premiere Ensemble contributed texts, improvisations, and audio recordings about their experiences during lockdown. The concert also features a special guest appearance by SFGC 2021-2022 Artist-in-Residence Bobby McFerrin and includes his Say Ladeo (composed by Rosler/McFerrin/Treece), The 23rd Psalm, and excerpts from McFerrin’s album Circlesongs; plus Pamela Z’s Pen Pal, and Tania León’s Rimas Tropicales.
Theresa Wong’s In Stillness I Sing is an SFGC commission featuring Sarah Cahill as the piano soloist. The piece uses texts, improvisations, and recordings from the singers about their experiences during the pandemic. In Stillness I Sing has broadcast three excerpts in three installments over the past year on Cahill’s KALW radio show, “Revolutions Per Minute.” The piece was workshopped and developed remotely from August 2020 to January 2021, and rehearsed remotely between April and May 2021, with the first movement recorded using JackTrip Virtual Studio. Following the first KALW broadcast in June 2021, which featured movement one, Wong met with and heard the chorus in-person (masked) for the first time in October 2021, for the recording of movements nine, 10, and 13. A fourth and final broadcast of the entire piece will take place on “Revolutions Per Minute,” in April 2022.
Wong emphasizes and celebrates the collaborative nature of the piece, despite the isolated and remote nature of its creation.
“I gave weekly prompts to the choristers centered around their ongoing experiences in lock-down,” says Wong. “which they could respond to in writing, drawings, poetry, voice memos and videos. The prompts ??came from me, Sarah, and chorus members. These responses were accessible to them all, as I intended the project to be a 'space' to process and share the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, while also giving them an active role in the co-creation of the work.”
“During the tumult of those still days – as everyone rehearsed tirelessly alone over zoom in their room, I felt moved by the spirit of joy, humor, wisdom, and resilience that these young voices shared with me.”
Bobby McFerrin’s 1997 album Circlesongs is based on an improvisational singing technique called “circle singing” that McFerrin created in the late 1980s. The performance of an arrangement of Say Ladeo (from McFerrin’s 1990 album VOCAbuLarieS,) is a culmination of workshops on the art of improvisation. The 23rd Psalm is an interpretation from the Biblical passage, arranged for chorus, that McFerrin dedicated to late mother. Pamela Z composed Pen Pal while serving as 2018-2019 SFGC Chorus School Composer-in-Residence. She has arranged the work to be performed by SFGC’s Premier Ensemble, specifically for this performance. 2021 Pulitzer Prize winner Tania León’s Rimas Tropicales is a cycle of three songs set to poetry by award-winning poet, Carlos Pintado.
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, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Yoko Ono, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).
Recent appearances include the Interlochen Arts Festival, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Boston Institute for Contemporary Art, a performance at Alice Tully Hall with the Silk Road Ensemble, Stanford Live, Le Poisson Rouge, and concerts at San Francisco Performances, Sacramento State’s Festival of New American Music, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the United Kingdom, and Toyusu Civic Center Hall in Tokyo. Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, ranging from the 18th century to the present day. 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, and Mayville State University.
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; three webinars presented by the San Francisco Symphony, including Five Composers You Should Know (Who Happen to be Women) (November 10); and 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 and Arts.
The first episode of At Home With Sarah Cahill captures an afternoon of musical storytelling filmed at her home in Berkeley. Cahill performs Vítezslava Kaprálová’s Preludes 1 and 3 (1937) and Amy Beach’s Dreaming (1892), and shares the compelling background of the works and the composers. She performs the two works on Terry Riley’s historic Mason & Hamlin piano, which had just arrived a few days before as a gift from Riley. Additional footage of Cahill speaking in her garden about her home and life in Berkeley is available here.
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Other Minds, Tzadik, Albany, Cold Blue, Other Minds, and Pinna labels. 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. Cahill recorded Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan with Gamelan Galak Tika, which was released by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2021.
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. Cahill is recording music from the project in a series of three albums for First Hand Records. The first volume, “In Nature,” is available in March 2022. Recent and upcoming performances 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, and Mayville State University.
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory. For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
About Theresa Wong: Theresa Wong is a composer, cellist and vocalist active at the intersection of music, experimentation, improvisation and the synergy of multiple disciplines. Bridging sound, movement, theater and visual art, her primary interest lies in finding the potential for transformation for both the artist and receiver alike.
Following inquisitive paths into song forms, video, just intonation, movement and visual media, her works include As We Breathe, an installed song commissioned by Long Beach Opera for the 2020 Songbook, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill for The Future Is Female project, and Harbors, co-composed with Long String Instrument inventor Ellen Fullman and chosen as one of The Wire’s top 50 releases of 2020. Her multi-media piece, The Unlearning (Tzadik), 21 songs for violin, cello and 2 voices inspired by Goya's Disasters of War etchings premiered in 2013 at Roulette in Brooklyn and was also presented at the 2016 New Frequencies Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Current and past commissions include works for The San Francisco Girls Chorus, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, Splinter Reeds, Vajra Voices, and Del Sol String Quartet.
She collaborates with many singular artists, including Fred Frith, Luciano Chessa, Annie Lewandowski, Chris Brown, Frantz Loriot, John McCowen, Søren Kjærgaard, Carla Kihlstedt, and filmmaker Daria Martin. In 2018, Wong founded fo’c’sle, a record label dedicated to adventurous music from the Bay Area and beyond, featuring inaugural releases by Ellen Fullman with David Gamper and Stuart Dempster, Chris Brown, Powerdove and the Lijiang Quintet.
She has shared her work internationally at venues including Fondation Cartier in Paris, Cafe Oto in London, Festival de Arte y Ópera Contemporánea in Morelia, Mexico, The Stone in New York City and Centennial Hall in Sydney. Wong is a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow and has also been an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Lijiang Studio and Yaddo. She currently works and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the San Francisco Girls Chorus: Praised by Gramophone Magazine as a “remarkable tapestry of teenage voices,” the five-time GRAMMY Award-winning San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) is recognized as one of the world’s leading youth vocal ensembles. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe, SFGC presents subscription performances throughout the Bay Area and regularly performs both nationally and internationally as a cultural ambassador for San Francisco. SFGC is a frequent collaborator with leading arts organizations such as Kronos Quartet, San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera, as well as numerous world-renowned guest artists.
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