Pianist Sarah Cahill Releases New Album

Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as "a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde" by The New York Times, releases The Future is Female, Vol. 1, In Nature, today, March 4, 2022, on First Hand Records. The Future is Female is a three-volume series, which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe and include many new commissioned works and world premiere recordings.

Coinciding with the album release, Cahill will give a performance of The Future is Female on March 5, 2022, presented by the Barbican Centre in the Barbican's garden conservatory. This marathon concert begins at noon and runs until approximately 8pm with free admission. Tickets and information are available at www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2022/event/sarah-cahill-the-future-is-female. The album release and performance are presented in celebration of International Women's Day on March 8, 2022.

The Future is Female, Vol. 1, In Nature features works by Anna Bon, Fanny Mendelssohn, Teresa Carreño, Leokadiya Kashperova, Fannie Charles Dillon, Vítezslava Kaprálová, Agi Jambor, Eve Beglarian, Deirdre Gribbin, and Mary D. Watkins. This first album, loosely based on the theme of nature, will be followed later in 2022 by Vol. 2, At Play and Vol. 3, The Dance.

Cahill began working on this project, which now encompasses nearly 70 compositions, in 2018. "For decades I had been working with many living American composers, including Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, Eve Beglarian, Mary D. Watkins, Julia Wolfe, Ursula Mamlok, Meredith Monk, Annea Lockwood, and many more, but felt an urgent need to explore neglected composers from the past, and from around the globe," she explains. "Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of colour. It is still standard practice to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female, then, aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive, in any way, and the three albums in this series represent only a small fraction of the music by women which is waiting to be performed and heard. At some point I would love to record Kaprálová's complete April Preludes and Kashperova's Au sein de la nature, but my main objective in this project is to be inclusive rather than exhaustive."

Cahill has developed and performed The Future is Female as a flexible concert program, which she has been performing since the project's inception. It has been presented as an evening-length recital performance and as a marathon performance and is ideal for concert halls, museums, and gallery spaces. The marathon performance duration is typically between four to seven hours, allowing audience members to sit and listen for any length of time, with the ability to come and go, as well as the ability to walk around the space. Recent performances of The Future is Female include concerts presented by 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, Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg (Florida), North Dakota Museum of Art, and Mayville State University.

The album was recorded at St. Stephen's Church, Belvedere, California, August 15-28, 2021, and is produced and recorded by Matt Carr. For more information about Sarah Cahill, click here.

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