The Future is Female: an interview with pianist Sarah Cahill
I was already a fan of Sarah Cahill’s work before I heard her perform 11 years ago at Portland Piano International’s Summer Music Festival, but familiarity with her recordings didn’t prepare me for the sheer power of her concert presence. She fills the room. The thorniest scores, the most inscrutable passages—she opens pieces like books and through her fierce intellect, formidable technique, and bone-deep musicianship, brings the story of each one to life for her listeners. She plays with an integrity born from living each note and playing everything without ego or artifice. I’ve attended many concerts by other excellent pianists in the intervening years since I first heard Cahill play, but her performance is one that has stayed with me for over a decade.
My friend, the composer Chester Biscardi, suggested that I contact Cahill and ask to interview her (and offered to let me drop his name), but it took me three months gather the courage to follow up on his idea. When I finally contacted her, she responded with a graciousness that belies her status as one of the leading new music pianists working today. And what I learned over the course of our email exchanges was that everything I’d admired about her concert persona is exactly what she is in real life: intelligent, warm, and ego-free.
Although most fans of modern classical piano music are familiar with Sarah Cahill’s playing, it’s worth noting that in addition to her successes as a pianist, she is a writer, a music critic, producer, instructor at San Francisco Conservatory, and host of a radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, which airs every Sunday evening on KALW 9.7 FM in San Francisco. She has commissioned over 60 new compositions. Her most recent project, The Future is Female celebrates the musical contributions of women composers through history and around the world. It is an honor to feature her on No Dead Guys.
You’ve credited your first piano teacher, Sharon Mann, as your most influential instructor. What did she bring to her lessons, personally and musically, that allowed you to thrive under her instruction?
First of all, she had (and has) a charismatic presence. I was eight years old when I met her, and was completely enchanted by her. She specialized in Bach performance on the piano, and she taught me about the dance movements of Suites and Partitas, and covered each page of the Well-Tempered Clavier with articulations, highlighting each entry of a fugue. She had a great sense of humor, but took music extremely seriously. And the fact that she took me seriously, even as a kid, somehow opened up the possibility that I could be a musician. We had to have Urtext editions of Bach published by Henle. Schirmer editions were almost forbidden. It was all tremendously exciting to me. She gave me the best foundation I could ask for.
Despite performing with San Francisco Bay area orchestras as a child—and entering San Francisco Conservatory as a teenager—you chose to pursue an undergraduate degree in English. How did your immersion in literature and poetry influence your music?
There are certainly parallels between the two art forms: the romantic poetry of Keats, effusive but disciplined, has similarities to Schumann, and the perfection of a Shakespeare sonnet matches the perfection of a Bach fugue. But basically I couldn’t stand being shut up in one of those antiseptic cell-like practice rooms for many hours a day. I also stopped feeling like I had something to contribute to traditional classical music, and hated the competitive atmosphere. Now, on the other hand, my favorite thing is to practice all day long.
When did you discover your passion for the music of living composers, and what sparked it?
It started early, when I became friends with composers like John Adams and Ingram Marshall. But it was around 1985, when Larry Polansky invited me to play his music in festivals, that I felt I had a real purpose. I could decipher new scores and interpret them. I started getting invited to the Other Minds Festival to play music by George Lewis and Pauline Oliveros and other composers. Spending time with composers like Pauline Oliveros and Annea Lockwood and Terry Riley—remarkable good-hearted humans—had a profound effect on me. It felt exhilarating to be part of the creation of a new composition.
I understand that John Adams composed China Gates for you when you were still a teenager. How did you approach that difficult score, and how has your conception of it grown since you first learned it?
It took many years-- in fact, decades-- to understand China Gates. I had never seen a minimalist score, and didn’t know how to interpret the patterns zigzagging across the page. When John wrote it, the minimalist aesthetic demanded a kind of flat surface, without much overt expression, so that’s what he indicated in his notes to the piece. After a few decades, I asked him if it could be more expressive, and he gave his blessing, so now I try to bring out the melodic lines.
Tell me about the time you spent working as a writer and a music critic. How did this work influence your understanding of contemporary music when you decided to devote yourself to your performance career?
In order to write intelligently about a new composition, I felt it was essential to study the score if possible, ask the composer about it, and listen to any available recordings. I enjoy that kind of research. That gave me a good grounding for approaching new music. Also, I think we musicians often live in our own bubbles, without any sense of music-making out in the world. Writing music reviews gives you a great perspective on the broader picture: which composers are overplayed, which deserve more attention, what is most needed in one’s own community. I also studied a lot of chamber music, symphonies, songs, electronic music—it’s a great education. And there has been lots of overlap: I first met Terry Riley after writing about a performance of “In C” and interviewing him on the radio. Then I fell in love with his music.
When did you begin producing concerts, and what prompted you to do so?
I felt that if something should be done, and no one was doing it, I might as well do it myself. In the mid-90s I organized several seasons of piano recitals featuring excellent Bay Area pianists. In 1997 I wanted to celebrate the 100th birthday of the pioneering composer Henry Cowell, which became three-day festival, and for which I commissioned works from Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, and others. Around the same time I started a summer solstice concert at the Chapel of the Chimes, a beautiful columbarium in Oakland, with dozens of composers and musicians spread around the building and performing simultaneously, so the audience walks through and discovers them along the way. These are events that I just felt needed to happen.
Many of the pieces you perform and record are ones that you’ve commissioned. Why did you begin commissioning pieces, and how many have you brought to life through this process?
The first time I commissioned new work was in 1997, for a big three-day piano festival celebrating the centennial of Henry Cowell. I felt it was important to show the profound influence Cowell has had on composers writing now. I commissioned Terry Riley’s first four-hand piece, Cinco de Mayo. The remarkable pianist Nurit Tilles told me that Meredith Monk was writing a big solo piece for her, but needed some funds to finish it. That was Steppe Music, about forty minutes long. I also commissioned new work from “Blue” Gene Tyranny and Phil Krumm. It was such an exciting experience, bringing new music to life, which previously had not existed. I was hooked. I’ve commissioned more than sixty new compositions by now.
There are many wonderful composers writing music today. How do you discover the unknown ones, and what is your criteria for choosing which ones to commission?
The most important thing is to believe in the composer and the music whole-heartedly. There are plenty of wrong reasons to play new music: commissioning a famous composer because it’s good for your career, or trying to fulfil a diversity quota, or because that composer is trendy. I do a lot of research and listen to lots of the composer’s work, and imagine what the piano music would be like, if he or she hasn’t written for piano. I feel it’s also important to support and encourage a range of composers, from teenagers to octagenarians, from varied backgrounds. I’ve gotten fantastic scores from unknown composers, and terrible scores from famous composers. And it’s very important to have the money discussion up front.
What advice do you offer pianists who would like to commission a piece of music but lack the funds to do so?
There are excellent organizations like New Music USA and the Copland Fund who can help with funds for commissioning. And if you know someone with a family foundation, or with some extra income, it never hurts to ask if that person would like to commission a new composition. You can work out the terms of the commission—that person’s name below the title line, or a signed copy of the score—but those are details to be navigated later. It is always important to pay composers, no matter what level they are at in their careers, but there are certainly talented students whose fees might be less than those of established composers. I do a lot of research and keep track of the work of great organizations like Kaufman Music Center which supports young female and female-identifying composers.
You keep a busy schedule! In addition to performing, recording, producing, and teaching at San Francisco Conservatory, you host your own radio show, Revolutions Per Minute every Sunday evening on KALW 9.7 FM in San Francisco. When was the show created, and what do you feel your interviews with new music composers and performers offers your listeners?
My first radio show was in 1989 at KPFA in Berkeley, under the mentorship of Charles Amirkhanian, who was the visionary music director there. That first show was about original recordings of Stravinsky, which I taped from my father’s old 78s, and were otherwise unavailable: the 1929 recording of the Rite of Spring, the 1932 recording of L’Histoire du Soldat, the wonderful early recordings of his Ebony Concerto and Octet and so on. In 2002 I moved to KALW in San Francisco. I love doing interviews with composers and musicians because it offers insights into music which might otherwise seem esoteric or forbidding. If you hear Kaija Saariaho or Roscoe Mitchell describing the creative process, that opens up the listening experience.
The first time I heard you perform was when you played selections of your project, A Sweeter Music, at Portland Piano International. Why did you feel it was important to commission a program of anti-war pieces, and how do you feel projects such as these open a dialogue about difficult social issues?
It was in 2007 and 2008 as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were dragging on and on, with such senseless loss and damage. I thought of composers I know who are also activists, like Terry Riley, who was arrested in an anti-war protest, and the late Frederic Rzewski, who wrote so many important political compositions, and Pauline Oliveros, who was outspoken against several wars during her lifetime. I started asking these composers to write about peace and war. Terry said he would rather write a “pro-peace” composition than an “anti-war” composition. The project grew and grew to include composers as diverse as Yoko Ono, the cult band The Residents, and then-seventeen-year-old Preben Antonsen. As Rzewski once said: “Music probably can’t change the world, but we have to act as if it can.”
Tell me about your current project, The Future is Female. What is it and why do you feel it’s necessary to highlight the music of women composers?
The Future is Female is a collection of about seventy compositions by women, starting with Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre in 1685, through history, and around the world, up to the present day. This is one way I can confront the ubiquity of all-male composer recitals. There is absolutely no good reason for pianists to play exclusively music by men. My hope is that eventually we won’t need to highlight any group of composers by gender or race, but we’re not there yet. It takes one piano student deciding to play one composition by a woman, and one pianist deciding to tour with one piece by a woman, and gradually a much-needed culture shift will take place over time. It seems like a ridiculously low bar, but that’s where we are.
Of all the composers featured in The Future is Female, who do you feel has been most unjustly ignored by performers and audiences?
So many! Definitely Helene de Montgeroult, who wrote magnificent sonatas and etudes in the early 1800s. I’m not sure they’re ignored exactly, but we should hear much more Viteslava Kapralova, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Julia Perry, Leokadiya Kashperova, Germaine Tailleferre… the list goes on and on.
How many new compositions did you commission for The Future is Female, and how (other than gender) did you select the composers you chose for this project?
So far, I myself have commissioned three composers for this project: Mary Watkins, Regina Harris Baiocchi, and Theresa Wong. For my marathon concert at the Barbican Conservatory in London in early March, the Barbican commissioned a new work by Arlene Sierra and a two-piano version of Errollyn Wallen’s new piano concerto. I also include a new piece by Michelle Li commissioned by Musaics of the Bay. My goal is to include a diverse range of composers, in terms of race and ethnicity and age (from teenagers to elders), and also stylistic variety, to reflect the world we live in.
The Future is Female includes more than 70 works by women from around the globe, from the 18th century to present day. How are these pieces similar to music composed by men (within each era and culture) and how are they different?
There is no real difference between music by women and music by men. It’s just that we have heard music by men almost exclusively for centuries, and now it’s time to hear some music by women.
Why do you think so many performing pianists avoid programming works by unknown composers?
They don’t want to take risks. They assume their audiences want to hear the same handful of pieces they always play. So many pianists think they’re taking a big risk by performing a sonata by Copland or Barber or Prokofiev. Like “Oooo, I’m venturing into the twentieth century!”
As one of the leading champions of music by living composers, you’ve done much to expand the piano repertoire. What do you feel is the most successful way to introduce new works to listeners, and how can artists encourage concert presenters to program more new works?
I think talking to listeners helps—to break down that wall between performer and audience. For instance, Regina Harris Baiocchi’s Piano Poems are inspired by poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, and Regina herself, so I read the poems and point out that the third piece uses meters alternating 7/8 and 5/8, to reflect the patterns of haiku. That’s helpful in listening. Over the years, people have vehemently declared they don’t like contemporary music, but then when they heard a piece like Theresa Wong’s She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, they love it. It’s like “Green Eggs and Ham.” Older audiences still think of “new music” as being dissonant and atonal, but even if you play “atonal” music by Ursula Mamlok or Johanna Beyer, if you find a way to guide them through it, they will enjoy it.
What upcoming projects are you most excited about?
I’m excited about learning a lot of new music for upcoming concerts. A few years ago I commissioned a big difficult piece for violin and piano from Roscoe Mitchell, and violinist Kate Stenberg and I will finally premiere it in a festival at Mills College next week. On May 1st, I’m joining the wonderful Friction Quartet for a program of quintets by Tania León, Timo Andres, and Max Stoffregen. Because of the pandemic, I have yet to perform two major solo works I commissioned a few years ago, from the late Frederic Rzewski and from Robert Pollock, which I look forward to premiering at some point soon. And in July I’ll play a four-hour marathon of The Future is Female at Newport Classical.
What advice would you offer to your students at San Francisco Conservatory when they ask you how to create a career in music?
I advise them to think outside the usual paradigm of a classical concert career. Think of what you can offer that is different, unique, and valuable. It may not be Beethoven Sonatas and Chopin Scherzos. I know a young pianist who is organizing concerts in prisons and musical fundraisers for Ukrainian refugees. She understands the need and responds to it. Also, do research. If you love Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated, you could be the hundredth pianist to play it, or you could go on IMSLP and find Rzewski scores which have never been performed before. Which would your audience be more interested in? Dream big, and diversify your repertoire. It can only make you a better pianist.
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, 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).
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’s latest project is The Future is Female, a ritual installation and communal feminist immersive listening experience featuring more than seventy 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, 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, 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 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 has recently commissioned 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.
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 remains strongly committed to making music during these challenging times. Recent and upcoming livestream concerts include performances presented by the Bang on a Can Marathon, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox series, Old First Concerts, Harrison House, Musaics of the Bay, and the Ross McKee Foundation. Cahill also continues to perform outdoor concerts for socially distanced audiences in public parks throughout the Bay Area. In fall 2020, she participated in lectures and panel discussions about women composers and gender equity presented by the San Francisco Symphony and American Composers Forum + I CARE IF YOU LISTEN. Continuing her mission of commissioning new works, in 2020, Cahill has commissioned works by Roscoe Mitchell, Mary Watkins, Regina Harris Baiocchi, Pamela Z, Riley Nicholson, Maija Hynninen, and Robert Pollock.
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 Journalpraised 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 faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory
To learn more about her, visit Sarah Cahill.