About this Artist

Recently called “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, SARAH CAHILL has commissioned, premiered, and recorded numerous compositions for solo piano. Over 40 composers have dedicated works to her, including John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. Recent appearances include Terry Riley’s Sri Moonshine series, a concert at San Quentin of the music Henry Cowell wrote while incarcerated there, four performances at the San Francisco Symphony’s Soundbox, a week-long residency at the Noguchi Museum in New York, and concerts at Le Poisson Rouge and Roulette in New York. She has also performed chamber music recently with the Alexander String Quartet and with the New Century Chamber Orchestra. She enjoys working closely with composers, musicologists, and scholars on 20th- and 21st-century music. Upcoming appearances include Alice Tully Hall, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and Toyosu Civic Center Hall in Tokyo. 

Her writing has appeared in the John Adams Reader, Contemporary Music Review, Keyboard Magazine, the Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music, and Piano and Keyboard Magazine. Her pre-concert talks and onstage interviews have been featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, and Cal Performances, and her joint interviews with Meredith Monk and Björk, and with Elliott Carter and Phil Lesh, are on Counterstream Radio. Her four-CD set Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley has just been released the Irritable Hedgehog label. She curates a new music series at the Berkeley Art Museum and is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory. Her radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, which has recently featured two-hour interviews with John Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Helmut Lachenmann, and David Harrington, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco.