Sarah Cahill Honors International Women's Day with The Future is Female
Pianist Sarah Cahill Celebrates International Women’s Day on March 8 with The Future is Female
Performing Six Hours of Music by Women Composers from Around the Globe at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Saturday, March 8, 2025 from 2-8pm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art | 1000 5th Ave, New York, NY
European Paintings 1250–1800, Gallery 609
Free with Museum Admission
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New York, NY – Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as a “fiercely gifted” by The New York Times, will mark International Women’s Day on Saturday, March 8, 2025 from 2-8pm with a six-hour marathon performance of music from her ongoing project The Future is Female presented by MetLiveArts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue), in the European Paintings 1250-1800 Gallery 609. The Future is Female is Cahill’s exploration of music for solo piano by women composers from the Baroque to the present day, which includes more than 70 pieces from around the globe, some commissioned by or for Cahill as part of the project. This is Cahill’s debut performance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Sarah Cahill has been featured performing music from The Future is Female in an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, as well as in eight-hour marathon performances at the Barbican Centre in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., both celebrating International Women’s Day. In addition, Cahill recorded 30 works from The Future is Female on a three-volume set of albums released in 2022 and 2023 on the First Hand Records label, which included many world premiere recordings and was widely acclaimed by publications including in the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, BBC Music Magazine, International Piano, The Wire, Gramophone Magazine, and more. BBC Music Magazine reported, “the American pianist [Sarah Cahill] takes us on a chronological journey that zips around the world, stitching together contrasting styles into an enjoyable musical patchwork,” while Textura notes Cahill’s “ability to capture the essence of each piece and illuminate it with eloquent playing.”
Sarah Cahill began working on The Future is Female in 2018. She says, “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 I felt an urgent need to explore neglected composers from the past, and from around the globe. Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of color. 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 . . . The possibilities are, in fact, limitless.”
For her marathon installment of The Future is Female at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on International Women’s Day this year, Cahill will perform music for solo piano by women composers written across five centuries from 1687 to 2020, encompassing the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern periods, including works such as:
Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Suite in D minor (1687)
Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre was celebrated in her lifetime as both a composer and harpsichordist, an acclaimed musician in the court of Louis XIV, and one of only a few French composers to publish keyboard pieces in the 17th century. Jacquet de la Guerre’s Suites speak to her boundless imagination and prodigious talents at the keyboard.
Hélène de Montgeroult: Sonata No. 9, Op. 5 No. 3 (1811)
Hélène de Montgeroult was a virtuoso pianist and composer. In a possibly apocryphal story, she saved herself from the guillotine by improvising variations on “Le Marsaillaise” during the French Revolution. Sonata No. 9 is one of Montgeroult’s many works for keyboard.
Vítězslava Kaprálová: April Preludes (1937) …
