The Future is Female, Vol. 2: The Dance Sarah Cahill

• Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665 - 1729): Pièces de clavecin, Book 1, Suite No. 1 in D Minor (Excerpts):
• 1Guerre: Pièces de clavecin, Book 1, Suite No. 1 in D Minor (Excerpts): No. 1, Prelude02:58
• 2Guerre: Pièces de clavecin, Book 1, Suite No. 1 in D Minor (Excerpts): No. 4, Courante II01:25
• 3Guerre: Pièces de clavecin, Book 1, Suite No. 1 in D Minor (Excerpts): No. 5, Sarabande02:24
• 4Guerre: Pièces de clavecin, Book 1, Suite No. 1 in D Minor (Excerpts): No. 8, Chaconne L'inconstante03:16
• 5Guerre: Pièces de clavecin, Book 1, Suite No. 1 in D Minor (Excerpts): No. 6, Gigue01:51
• Clara Schumann (1819 - 1896): Variationen über ein Thema von Robert Schumann, Op. 20:
• 6Schumann: Variationen über ein Thema von Robert Schumann, Op. 2012:26
• Germaine Tailleferre (1892 - 1983): Partita for Solo Piano:
• 7Tailleferre: Partita for Solo Piano: I. Perpetuum Mobile02:53
• 8Tailleferre: Partita for Solo Piano: II. Notturno02:42
• 9Tailleferre: Partita for Solo Piano: III. Allegramente03:34
• Zenobia Powell Perry (1908 - 2004): Rhapsody for Solo Piano:
• 10Perry: Rhapsody for Solo Piano04:45
• Madeleine Dring (1923 - 1977): Colour Suite (Excerpts):
• 11Dring: Colour Suite (Excerpts): IV. Blue Air03:10
• 12Dring: Colour Suite (Excerpts): V. Brown Study02:10
• Betsy Jolas (b. 1926): Tango Si for Solo Piano:
• 13Jolas: Tango Si for Solo Piano02:04
• Elena Kats-Chernin (b. 1957): Peggy’s Minute Rag:
• 14Kats-Chernin: Peggy’s Minute Rag03:36
• Meredith Monk (b. 1942): St. Petersburg Waltz:
• 15Monk: St. Petersburg Waltz07:34
• Gabriela Ortiz (b. 1964): Preludio for Solo Piano:
• 16Ortiz: Preludio for Solo Piano02:02
• Preludio y Estudio:
• 17Ortiz: Preludio y Estudio: No. 3, Estudio06:22
• Theresa Wong (b. 1976): She Dances Naked under Palm Trees:
• 18Wong: She Dances Naked under Palm Trees07:46
• Total Runtime01:12:58

Info for The Future is Female, Vol. 2: The Dance

The Future is Female is a three-volume series which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These recordings feature thirty compositions by women around the globe and includes many première recordings.

Composers in the series include Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Leokadiya Kashperova, Deirdre Gribbin, Mary Watkins, Fanny Mendelssohn, Germaine Tailleferre, Zenobia Powell Perry, Gabriela Ortiz, Hannah Kendall, Chen Yi, Teresa Carreño, and many others.

“The pleasure of this album is the variety of styles on offer” (The Guardian)

“This disc is a revelation, and is wholeheartedly recommended.” (RECOMMENDED, MusicWeb International)

“Praise must go to Sarah Cahill for her pianistic prowess and even more for her exhaustive research” (All About The Arts)

Sarah Cahill, piano

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’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. 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, Vıt́ězslava 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, 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 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. 1, In Nature, was released in March 2022 on First Hand Records, with Volume 2, The Dance out in October 2022. 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 performance on the album and the recording itself each earned 4 stars in BBC Music Magazine. Of the album, BBC Music Magazine wrote, “The feminist slogan ‘The Future is Female’ is shown on the front cover, held up on a protest sign. And as this recording shows, the past was female too, it’s just that women are often written out of it. Here, then, is an alternative history of solo piano music – and one that’s delivered with real conviction by pianist Sarah Cahill.”

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 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 faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Booklet for The Future is Female, Vol. 2: The Dance