2006

• Wed

  02

  Aug

  2006

  Noontime Concert Series - Ornstein, Grainger, Cowell and others

  12:30pm

  St. Patrick’s Church, 756 Mission St. (near Yerba Buena Gardens), San Francisco. www.noontimeconcerts.org

  Sarah performs a lunchtime concert with music by Ornstein, Grainger, Cowell, Fujieda, and others as part of the Noontime Concerts series. According to their website, “St. Patrick’s Church, built in 1872 and rebuilt by 1914 after the destruction of the 1906 earthquake, is one of San Francisco’s prized historic buildings. Inside, you’ll find dazzling Tiffany stained glass windows, pillars, an altar of Bottecino Italian and Connemara Irish marble, twelve tuned steeple bells, and an exquisite 30-rank 1930 E. M. Skinner organ with a Gothic pipecase featuring a statue of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music.”  

• Tue

  12

  Sep

  2006

  Fundraiser for Mayoral Candidate Zelda Bronstein

  8pm

  Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St., Berkeley. www.zeldaformayor.org, www.hillsideclub.org.

  Sarah performs fifteen minutes of new work by Mamoru Fujieda, Kyle Gann, Elizabeth Lauer, and others in a fundraiser for Zelda Bronstein, running for mayor of Berkeley. 

• Thu

  28

  Sep

  2006

  Sat

  30

  Sep

  2006

  The Boston Research Institute - On Reading Emerson

  Boston Research Center for the 21st Century, 396 Harvard St., Cambridge, Mass.  www.brc21.org.

  Sarah joins a group of scholars, educators, and artists for a conference entitled Emerson and the Power of the Imagination, presented by the Boston Research Institute for the 21st Century, an international peace institute that envisions a worldwide network of global citizens developing cultures of peace through dialogue and understanding.  On the second day of the conference, Sarah premieres a piece composed for the occasion by Kyle Gann.  Here is the program note:

  On Reading Emerson (2006)

  Pianist Sarah Cahill asked me to write a piece about one of our mutually favorite authors, Emerson. I resisted the impulse to title the piece “Whim,” though like Emerson, “I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.” Of course my conception of Emerson is filtered through Charles Ives, who wrote of him, “As thoughts surge to his mind, he fills the heavens with them, crowds them in, if necessary, but seldom arranges them, along the ground first.” To create that effect in music, I did the reverse: wrote a bunch of passages of music around a single (or double) idea, and arranged them along the ground before fitting them together. Because I think of Emerson as ever aware of the interpenetration of opposites, almost every chord in the piece contains a tone from the opposite chord, and because he is all encompassing, I have used, for the first time in my life, a 12-tone row (It only appears twice, and elsewhere in fragments, and is never transposed, retrograded, or anything). Like Emerson’s writing, the piece is peppered with quotations, three of which the listener may recognize. The fourth will not be recognized; it is from a song that I began writing in college on Emerson’s “The Rhodora” and never finished, because the only good phrase in the song was to these lines of Emerson:

      Why thou wert there, O, rival of the rose!

      I never thought to ask, I never knew….

  I thank Sarah for giving that phrase a home at last.

   

• Sun

  15

  Oct

  2006

  Performance of Grainger and Cowell at PT. Reyes Dance Palace

  4pm

  Point Reyes Dance Palace, 5th and B Streets, Point Reyes Station.  www.dancepalace.org

  Sarah performs works by Grainger, Cowell, and others at a beautiful community center located in one of the most idyllic places on earth.  

• Fri

  27

  Oct

  2006

  Berkeley Arts Festival - premieres of Rzewski, Polansky, Morricone

  8pm

  Jazzschool, 2087 Addison St., Berkeley.  www.berkeleyartsfestival.org.

  Sarah plays a recital of new work as part of the Berkeley Arts Festival:

  Snippets 2 (2006)- Frederic Rzewski (premiere)
  Almost a Quintet (2006)- Larry Polansky (premiere)
  On Reading Emerson (2006)- Kyle Gann
  Tango (2006)- Andrea Morricone (premiere)
  Improvviso (2006)- Andrea Morricone (premiere)
  “Le Crepescule” Rag (2006)- Elizabeth Lauer
  Pleasant Dreaming (2006)- Phil Collins

  The pieces by Rzewski, Polansky, and Gann, as well as Morricone’s Improvviso, were written for Sarah.

   

• Sat

  18

  Nov

  2006

  Fri

  24

  Nov

  2006

  Pacific Crossings Festival in Tokyo

  Concerts take place at the American Embassy, at the Jiyugakuen Myonichikan (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), and at the Kanazawa Art Center.   www.pacificcrossings.com.

  Pacific Crossings Festival in Tokyo.  This year the festival celebrates the eccentric and brilliant Australian composer Percy Grainger.  Sarah performs some of the scintillating and often radical solo works as well as virtuosic four-hand and two-piano pieces with Joseph Kubera.  

• Sun

  10

  Dec

  2006

  Conversation with Thomas Ades

  11am

  Salon at the Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter St. (between Powell and Mason), San Francisco.  www.performances.org.

  Sarah talks with British composer-pianist Thomas Ades, in conjunction with a rare Bay Area recital he performs the night before (at Herbst Theatre), featuring works by Janacek, Ades, Castiglioni, Stravinsky, and Nancarrow.