Mosaic of Sarah Cahill (lower right corner) and the thirteen composers contribution to her program (courtesy of Jensen Artists)
Following up on the release of In Nature, the first of three volumes in her The Future is Female series of recordings, pianist Sarah Cahill will perform a solo recital at Artist Migration in conjunction with the exhibition entitled Women Rising, which will open to the public today. Her program will account for thirteen female composers, only one of whom was included on the In Nature volume: Mary D. Watkins, whose “Summer Days” was given its premiere commercial recording on that album. The program will also include a work familiar to many that have been following Cahill for some time: The West Coast premiere of Teresa Wong’s “She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees,” inspired by a Nina Simone song based on a text by Harlem Renaissance poet William Waring Cuney, took place at an Old First Concerts recital in May of 2019.
The other composers to be represented on Cahill’s Women Rising recital are as follows:
- Regina Harris Baiocchi
- Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou
- Tania León
- Gabriela Ortiz
- Aida Shirazi
- Maggi Payne
- Pauline Oliveros
- Elinor Armer
- Bunita Marcus
- Janice Giteck
- Michelle Li
Some of these names will probably be familiar to those that do their best to keep up with Cahill’s recital performances. For example, Guèbrou is an Ethiopian nun, now 98 years old; and I first encountered her music through a video recording of a recital that Cahill presented at Harrison House in Joshua Tree in August of 2020. On the other hand Armer teaches Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; and her contribution, “Thaw,” was composed in 1975.
The program will also include two “anniversary compositions,” both commissioned by Cahill in 2001 to honor the 100th birthday of Ruth Crawford Seeger: The first of these is Payne’s “Holding Pattern,” inspired by Seeger’s set of nine preludes. “Quintuplets Play Pen,” on the other hand, was composed by Pauline Oliveros; and it marked the first time that she had worked with conventional music notation since the Sixties.
Both the Women Rising exhibition and Cahill’s recital will be presented at 780 Valencia Street in the Mission. The performance will begin at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 24. Tickets are being sold through an Eventbrite event page. The price of tickets for reserved seating is $25. There is also a discount rate of $15 for standing room only.
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