Pianist Sarah Cahill in an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert Performs Music from The Future is Female Album Trilogy on First Hand Records
Pianist Sarah Cahill in an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Featuring Music from Sarah Cahill’s
The Future is Female Album Trilogy on First Hand Records
“Sarah Cahill plays a wide-ranging selection of music composed by women on the final volume of a series distinctive for its finesse and conviction.”
– Gramophone Magazine on The Future is Female
Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, recorded a NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert in July 2023, which premieres today. Cahill performed selections by composers highlighted on the three volumes of her album trilogy, The Future is Female –– the recorded counterparts to her ongoing curation project of the same name. The concert is available for viewing via NPR Music –– watch here.
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.
Listen to The Future is Female, Vols. 1-3 (First Hand Records):
Vol. 1: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol1
Vol. 2: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol2
Vol. 3: https://lnkfi.re/CahillFutureisFemaleVol3
“It was an incredible honor to perform in the iconic Tiny Desk series,” says Sarah Cahill. “I've admired the crew there for many years, and they were so welcoming. It was deeply meaningful to be in that legendary space where some of my favorite musicians have performed.”
NPR Music producer Tom Huizenga writes, “Pianist Sarah Cahill commands a near godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music. She's commissioned dozens of new works from today's top composers including John Adams, Julia Wolfe and Terry Riley. But when she sat down at the piano behind Bob Boilen's desk, she was focused not so much on new music but instead the plight of women composers. . . For this performance, she offers a sampler of The Future is Female, her multi-volume project that collects piano music by a staggeringly wide swath of women composers over a four-century span."
For her NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert, Cahill performed Czech composer Vítězslava Kaprálová’s April Prelude No. 1; Ethiopian nun and composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s Presentiment; Sarabande and Gigue from French Baroque era composer Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s Suite No. 1; and "a candle burns time" from American composer Regina Harris Baiocchi’s Piano Poems, written for Cahill in 2020. (Presentiment is included courtesy of the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation, a self-financing non-profit that funds music education for underserved children in the U.S and Ethiopia.)
Sarah Cahill began working on The Future is Female, which now encompasses more than 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 …
