June 5: Pianist Sarah Cahill performs The Future is Female as a Livestream Performance presented by Old First Concerts

Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs The Future is Female as a Livestream Performance Presented by Old First Concerts

Featuring 20th and 21st century works by women from around the globe

Friday, June 5, 2020 at 8pm PT

Livestream available with suggested donation to benefit Old First Concerts and Compass Family Services at www.oldfirstconcerts.org

“The Future is Female was truly a treat: a trip through time and place through a wonderful variety of classical styles.” – Chatham Lifestyle

Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com

San Francisco, CA – On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 8pm, Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, will perform The Future is Female as a livestream performance presented by Old First Concerts. This concert will be available to watch with a suggested donation. All donations received before and during this concert go to support two organizations which have been severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown – Old First Concerts and Compass Family Services, which provides a wide variety of human services to homeless families and those at risk of homelessness.

The Future is Female is a curation and performance project featuring more than sixty compositions by women around the globe, ranging from the 18th century to the present day. Cahill describes it as “a ritual installation and communal feminist immersive listening experience.” For this performance, Cahill presents an evening-length version of the project with the following pieces, focusing on music from the 20th and 21st centuries:

Gabriela Ortiz: Preludio y Estudio 3 (2011)
Margaret Bonds: Troubled Water (1967)
Germaine Tailleferre: Partita (1957)
Elizabeth A. Baker: Four Planes (2015)
Sofia Gubaidulina: Chaconne (1965)
Lois V Vierk: Yeah Yeah Yeah (1990)
Grazyna Bacewicz: Scherzo (1934)
Betsy Jolas: Tango Si (1984)
Elena Kats-Chernin: Peggy’s Rag (1996)

With this physical manifestation of her lifetime dedication to supporting the artistic work of women, Cahill illuminates works by women composers worldwide – Chinese, Azerbaijani, Afro-Cuban, African American, Czech, Lithuanian, Polish, and Venezuelan, among others – some who are alive and prolific and others who have passed but live on through their music. The San Diego Tribune describes Cahill as “a vessel through which musical ideas can pass, a communicator whose technique is put at the service of empathy and understanding.” 

Cahill is scheduled to perform the marathon of The Future is Female at BAMPFA on October 1, 2020. Other recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include North Dakota Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Carlsbad Music Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, the University of Iowa, and the Barbican Centre.

About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill 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 Champion of New Music by the American Composers Forum for 2018.

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. 

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 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.

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. For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.