Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs Nationwide Lou Harrison Centennial Tour

In celebration of composer Lou Harrison's 2017 centennial, "sterling pianist and intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde" (The New York Times) Sarah Cahill will perform concerts of his music spanning half a century - exuberant dance music from his early years, dissonant complexity from the 1940s, and substantial works from the 1980s - as well as music by his close friends and colleagues including Henry Cowell, John Cage, Johanna Beyer, Merton Brown, James Cleghorn, and Frank Wigglesworth in a nationwide tour to cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Cleveland, Orlando, Maui, Chicago, and more. Her concerts will range from solo piano recitals featuring unpublished works by Harrison to performances of Harrison's Piano Concerto to chamber performances with well-known Harrison collaborators and scholars, including percussionist William Winant, who premiered the Varied Trio with Harrison.

Tour dates in 2017 that have been announced include a celebratory Harrison centennial recital in Chicago at Constellation's Frequency Series (3111 N Western Ave, Chicago, IL) on March 12 at 8:30pm, a duo performance with violinist Kate Stenberg of Harrison's violin and piano music at San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music's Presidio Sessions at the Presidio Officer's Club (50 Moraga Ave, San Francisco, CA) on March 24 at 6pm, a solo recital at Harvey Mudd College (301 Platt Blvd, Claremont, CA) on April 2 at 8pm, and a performance of Harrison's solo piano music as part of a Centennial Celebration at Los Angeles' Tuesdays at Monk Space (4414 W 2nd St, Los Angeles, CA) on April 4 at 8pm, also featuring LA's own Varied Trio (pianist Aron Kallay, violinist Shalini Vijayan, and percussionist Yuri Inoo).

Cahill will perform a solo recital on April 6 at 7pm at New York's popular Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleeker St, New York, NY); she is the headliner of Center for New Music's MicroFest North: Iconoclasts at 100 (55 Taylor St, San Francisco, CA) on May 7; and will perform in the Berkeley Art Museum's evening celebrating Lou Harrison (2155 Center St., Berkeley, CA) on May 10 at 7pm, part of their FULL Series.

On the centennial of Harrison's birth, May 14, Cahill will take part in a full day of celebratory concerts presented by New Music Works at Peace United Church of Christ (900 High St., Santa Cruz, CA) with Linda Burman-Hall (microtonal tack piano), William Winant (percussion) Kate Stenberg (violin), John Schneider (microtonal guitar), Cid Pearlman Performance, Larry Reed (narrator), The Ariose Singers and the nMw Ensemble. Cahill will be presented in solo recitals featuring Harrison's music by Ebb and Flow Arts in Maui and the Big Island in Hawaii on May 20 and 21.

Early 2017 concerts have included a Harrison celebratory concert presented by Stanford Live at the Mountain View Community School and two performances of Harrison's Grand Duo with Kate Stenberg and Nancy Karp + Dancers at San Francisco's ODC Theater. Fall 2017 tour dates will include Philadelphia, Boston, Orlando, Knoxville, Miami, Cleveland, a Lou Harrison Festival in Japan, and many more.

Over fifty years ago Lou Harrison (1917 - 2003) composer, environmentalist and gay icon, quietly began his own musical revolution. With superb craftsmanship he combined a reverence for world cultures, a passionate belief in social equity and a love of melody and beauty in all its forms, to create his own world of music. In his over 300 compositions for western, eastern, and custom-made instruments Lou Harrison wrote for symphony orchestra, ballet, small chamber ensembles and soloists. He was a musical innovator and a visionary in the truest sense - tirelessly knocking on the door of possibility. Michael Tilson Thomas acknowledged Harrison's mastery by commissioning him to compose "Parade for M.T.T." the first piece of music Tilson Thomas conducted as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. Performers such as Keith Jarrett, Yo-Yo Ma, The Mark Morris Dance Group and Dennis Russell Davies also premiered Harrison's music. Beyond his myriad musical accomplishments, Harrison's outspoken, lifelong involvement in political activism (ranging from pre-Stonewall gay rights and early civil rights, to pacifism and countless environmental causes) garnered him icon status in many communities. He was recognized with countless awards including membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, "Humanitarian of the Year" by the American Humanist Association, the Michael Callen Medal of Achievement from the Annual Gay/Lesbian American Music Awards (GLAMA), and Musical America's composer of the year 2002. Biography courtesy of Harrison House louharrisonhouse.org.

Sarah Cahill had the opportunity to work closely with Lou Harrison, and has championed many of his works for piano. She visited him several times at his home in Aptos, California, and copied rare scores from his collection. She continues to research his music through people who knew him and the Harrison archives at University of California Santa Cruz. In 1997, Cahill was chosen to premiere Harrison's 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 has performed his Varied Trio and a number of solo and chamber works in a Lou Harrison festival in Tokyo. In preparing Harrison's Piano Concerto for performances with the La Jolla and Berkeley Symphonies, Cahill worked extensively with several of his colleagues and close collaborators.

Sarah Cahill's March-May 2017 Lou Harrison Tour Schedule
(Fall 2017 Lou Harrison tour dates will be announced in May 2017)

Solo Recital | Constellation | Chicago
March 12, 2017 at 8:30pm
Link: http://www.constellation-chicago.com/event/1427964-sarah-cahill-chicago/

Stenberg Cahill Duo | SFFCM Presidio Sessions | San Francisco, CA
March 24, 2017 at 6:00pm
Link: http://www.sffcm.org/concerts/presidio-sessions/stenberg-cahill-duo/

Solo Recital | Harvey Mudd College | Claremont, CA
April 2, 2017 at 8pm
Link: https://www.hmc.edu/calendar/events/hmc-concert-series-sarah-cahill-piano/

Recital Plus Varied Trio | Tuesdays at Monk Space | Los Angeles, CA
April 4, 2017 at 8pm
Link: http://tuesdaysatmonkspace.org/shows/harison/

Solo Recital | Le Poisson Rouge | NYC
April 6, 2017 at 7pm
Link: http://lpr.com/lpr_events/lou-harrison-centennial-sarah-cahill-april-6th-2017/

MicroFest North: Iconoclasts at 100 | Center for New Music | San Francisco, CA
May 7, 2017
Link: http://centerfornewmusic.com/calendar/

FULL: Harrison | Berkeley Art Museum | Berkeley, CA
May 10, 2017 at 7pm
Link: http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/program/full-2017-music-performance

Lou Harrison Centennial Celebration | New Music Works | Santa Cruz, CA
May 14, 2017 at 3pm and 7pm
Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2721368

Solo Recitals | Ebb and Flow Arts | Hawaii
May 20-21 2017
Link: http://ebbandflowarts.org/

About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, recently called "a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde" by The New York Times, has commissioned, premiered, and recorded numerous compositions for solo piano. Over forty composers have dedicated works to Cahill, including John Adams, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Yoko Ono, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She has also premiered pieces by Lou Harrison, Toshi Ichiyanagi, George Lewis, Leo Ornstein, and many others.

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. For the 80th birthday of composer Terry Riley, she commissioned ten new works for solo piano in his honor and performed them with several of Riley's own compositions venues across the country. She premiered several of these new pieces at the first New Music Gathering in January 2015, with Riley in attendance.

Cahill has performed classical and contemporary chamber music with artists and ensembles such as pianists Joseph Kubera, Adam Tendler, and Regina Schaffer; violinists Kate Stenberg and Stuart Canin; the Alexander String Quartet; New Century Chamber Orchestra; Left Coast Chamber Ensemble; and many more.

Recent and upcoming appearances include a concert at San Quentin of the music Henry Cowell wrote while incarcerated there; four performances at the San Francisco Symphony's Soundbox; a residency at Dickinson College; the Festival of New American Music as both keynote speaker and performer; Music in the Mountains; concerts in New York City at the Italian Academy, Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, and The Stone; a Lou Harrison 100th birthday celebration in Maui; and Philip Glass' Etudes at Stanford Live with four other pianists including Glass himself. In spring 2016, Cahill performed post-minimal masterpiece Patterns of Plants by Mamoru Fujieda all day for five days at the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York, surrounded by the iconic sculptures of Isamu Noguchi.

Sarah Cahill's discography includes over twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, and Pinna labels. Her 2013 release A Sweeter Music (Other Minds) featured musical reflections on war by eighteen composer/activists, commissioned especially for the album. In 2015, Pinna Records released her two-CD set of Mamoru Fujieda's Patterns of Plants, a fusion of nature and technology created by identifying the musical patterns in the electrical impulses of plants. Cahill recently finished recording a three-CD set of Terry Riley's solo and four-hand music with pianist Regina Schaffer for release in fall 2017 on the Irritable Hedgehog label.

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. Cahill is on the piano faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and curates a monthly series of new music concerts at the new Berkeley Art Museum. For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.

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