Jan. 23 & Feb. 9: Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs No Ordinary Light in Two San Francisco Concerts
Photo of Sarah Cahill by Kristen Wrzesniewski available in high-resolution at
jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/sarah-cahill
Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs No Ordinary Light
in Two San Francisco Concerts
Featuring the Music of Samuel Adams, Maurice Ravel, Robert Helps,
Zenobia Powell Perry, Lou Harrison, Maggi Payne, and Danny Clay
Old First Concerts
Friday, January 23, 2026 at 8pm
Old First Church | 1751 Sacramento Street | San Francisco, CA
Tickets and More Information
Livestream - Watch Here
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Monday, February 9, 2026 at 7:30pm
Barbro Osher Recital Hall | 200 Van Ness Ave. | San Francisco, CA
Tickets and More Information
“As tenacious and committed an advocate as any composer could dream of”
– San Francisco Chronicle
Watch Sarah Cahill’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert
San Francisco, CA – Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, will start the new year with two performances in San Francisco, presented by Old First Concerts on Friday, January 23, 2026 at 8pm in the Old First Church (1751 Sacramento Street) and by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, as part of its Faculty Artist Series, on Monday, February 9, 2026 at 7:30pm in Barbro Osher Recital Hall (200 Van Ness Ave.). The performance with Old First Concerts will also be livestreamed - watch here.
At both concerts, Cahill will perform a new program titled No Ordinary Light, a new project on the theme of homage and loss, combining classical and 20th century compositions with new commissioned works. Both performances will feature the music of Samuel Adams, Maurice Ravel, Robert Helps, Danny Clay, Zenobia Powell Perry, Lou Harrison, and Maggi Payne.
“The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light.”
– Jawaharlal Nehru on the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
“As this year comes to a close, I've been thinking a lot about loss, with the deaths of a few close friends, and also the ongoing profound loss we feel collectively under the current regime in this country,” says Cahill. “Music, as always, brings us together, and these works resonate with celebration, grief, and homage.”
About the Music on the Program
Robert Helps composed Hommage à Fauré as part of Trois Hommages (1972), a trilogy of works and one of his most popular and often recorded works. The first two pieces, which include à Fauré and à Rachmaninoff, expand upon the opulent pianism and poignant harmonies that are hallmarks of the composers to which each piece pays tribute.
Commissioned by Cahill, Samuel Adams’ solo piano work, Prelude (Hammer the Sky Bright), is a tribute to composer Ingram Marshall (1942–2022). A former resident of the San Francisco Bay area, Ingram Marshall’s work greatly influenced a number of composers and musicians from the area, including Adams – who studied with Marshall and considered him his mentor – and Cahill, who frequently performs Marshall's music and commissioned several works from him. Adams says of the work: “Prelude: Hammer the Sky Bright pays tribute to Ingram’s free-form, unpredictable sense of structure and highly impressionistic, almost ambient musical surfaces. His music often embraced the idea that form can be gradual and elusive—like late Sibelius—with the secrets of a piece only occasionally appearing close to its surface, like sunken cathedrals.”
Maurice Ravel composed Le Tombeau de Couperin between 1914 and 1917, during and after World War I – a devastating conflict in which Ravel took direct part as a truck driver in the French Army, thus feeling the impact of the war first hand. The music is not only a memorialization of Francois Couperin but the suite is also dedicated to six dear friends of Ravel lost at the cost of the war. Each of the six movements is dedicated to one of those friends and the lives they lived.
Danny Clay says of Circle Songs, which is dedicated to Terry Riley: I don’t know Terry personally, and yet I owe him a tremendous debt musically – his sounds, his ideas, and the warmth of his music have seeped into my subconscious (and, when lucky, my music) in ways that I am just now beginning to unravel. I think what I’ve ended up writing is ultimately a set of love songs. The more I think about it, the more I feel like there may not be any other kind of tune worth writing. The sheer act of composing is about falling in love, after all – whether it be with a sound, an idea, or a feeling of indescribable warmth. That's ultimately what I thank Terry and Sarah for the most – bringing to the world of music a seemingly endless wealth of all these things, especially love.”
Zenobia Powell Perry was a composer, professor, and civil rights activist of African American and Creek Indian heritage.. She composed Homage in 1990. The work utilizes a variety of different textures and techniques, including octaves, dense chords, and chromaticism. Homage is dedicated to Perry's former teacher William Dawson for his ninetieth birthday, and is based on the spiritual “I’ve Been Buked and I’ve Been Scorned.”
In addition to being an adventurous composer and skilled percussionist, Lou Harrison was fond of writing music in honor of his colleagues, friends, and fellow musicians he admired. Homage to Milhaud is inspired by Darius Milhaud, who, like Harrison, was a longtime teacher at Mills College in Oakland. Meanwhile, Harrison wrote his Fugue to David Tudor at Black Mountain College while he was teaching there. Harrison often worked with David Tudor, who was himself a pioneering pianist-composer.
Cahill commissioned Maggi Payne’s Holding Pattern in 2001 to honor the centennial birth year of pioneering composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. Of Holding Pattern, Payne says: “When Sarah Cahill approached me with the prospect of composing a work for piano in tribute to Ruth Crawford Seeger, particularly in reference to the Nine Preludes which Sarah had just recorded, I was intrigued. Ruth Crawford Seeger’s interest in timbre, particularly as represented in Prelude 6 and 9, spurred this brief work. This delicate timbral exploration’s last sustained notes are those that begin Prelude 6. The Mystico marking of Prelude 6 and the Tranquillo of Prelude 9 are reflected in the character of Holding Pattern.”
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).
Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, Metropolitan Museum, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival. Cahill also performed music from The Future is Female for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series.
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, performs No Ordinary Light, a new commissioning project devoted to the theme of homage. The program will feature music by Samuel Adams, Maurice Ravel, Robert Helps, Danny Clay, Zenobia Powell Perry, Lou Harrison, and Maggi Payne.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill
Presented by Old First Concerts
What: No Ordinary Light - Featuring the Music of Samuel Adams, Maurice Ravel, Robert Helps, Zenobia Powell Perry, Lou Harrison, Lou Harrison, Maggi Payne, and Danny Clay
When: Friday, January 23, 2026 at 8pm
Where: Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA 94109
Tickets and More information: www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performance/sarah-cahill-friday-january-23-at-8-pm
Livestream: www.youtube.com/live/HAOV-mDufkU?feature=share
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill
Presented by San Francisco Conservatory of Music
What: No Ordinary Light - Featuring the Music of Samuel Adams, Maurice Ravel, Robert Helps, Zenobia Powell Perry, Lou Harrison, Lou Harrison, Maggi Payne, and Danny Clay
When: Monday, February 9, 2026 at 7:30pm
Where: Barbro Osher Recital Hall, 200 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94102
Tickets and More information: sfcm.edu/experience/performances/fas-sarah-cahill-piano/20260209