Aug. 16: Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs Mística at Point Reyes Dance Palace – Featuring Music by Women of Color Throughout History
Photo of Sarah Cahill by Kristen Wrzesniewski available in high-resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/sarah-cahill
Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs Mística at Point Reyes Dance Palace
Featuring Music by Women of Color Throughout History
Saturday, August 16, 2025 at 2pm
Church Space | 503 B Street | Point Reyes Station, CA
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 featuring music from The Future is Female
Point Reyes Station, CA – Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as a “fiercely gifted” by The New York Times will be presented in concert by Point Reyes Dance Palace on Saturday, August 16 at 2pm. Performing her program Mística, Cahill brings the works of several exceptional women composers of color to the Point Reyes Dance Palace Church Space (503 B Street). Point Reyes Dance Palace last presented Cahill performing her program The Woods So Wild in July 2024.
Mística brings together vibrant and brilliant music composed by women of color through history, including Gabriela Ortiz (Mexico), Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (Ethiopia), Teresa Carreño (Venezuela), Margaret Bonds (USA), Tania León (Cuba/USA), Chiquinha Gonzaga (Brazil), and many more.
“It's such a delight to return to the Point Reyes Dance Palace for a summer concert of great music by women of color from the 19th century to the present day,” Cahill says. “From the Cuban dance rhythms of Tania León's Mistica to the orchestral virtuosity of Margaret Bonds' Troubled Water, this collection of works demonstrates the tremendous scope and diverse range of these composers – many of whom are fine pianists themselves. Theresa Wong will introduce her powerful piece, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees.”
About the Music Sarah Cahill Features in Mística:
Tania León: Mistica (2003)
Acclaimed pianist Ursula Oppens commissioned Afro-Cuban Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tania León to compose a work for her when Oppens was invited to perform in Havana, Cuba. The bold, frenetic, and percussive work makes use of the piano’s entire keyboard, delivering a lively, technically demanding, and oftentimes unpredictable melodic trajectory. Oppens performed the adventurous piece on Mother’s Day and told León’s mother, who was in the audience, “This piece is for you, it’s your Mother’s Day present.”
Gabriela Ortiz: Prelude and Etude #3 (2011)
Born in Mexico City, Gabriela Ortiz has composed operas and symphonic works as well as chamber and piano music. Her Preludio y Estudio #3, or Prelude and Etude No. 3, is inspired by Jesusa Palancares, a semi-fictional spiritual about a Mexican woman who emerged from poverty and fought in the Mexican revolution.
Margaret Bonds: Troubled Water (1967)
Margaret Bonds was an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher. Bonds is regarded as one of the first well-recognized Black composers and performers in the U.S.. Bonds was a prolific arranger of African-American spirituals and often collaborated with Langston Hughes. She was the first Black soloist to perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Theresa Wong: She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees (2019)
Theresa Wong wrote She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees for Cahill in 2019. She was inspired by Nina Simone’s a cappella song “Images” and its lyrics, which is a poem by Harlem Renaissance poet William Waring Cuney. The melody of Simone’s song appears in the opening of the piece. Wong is a cellist, composer, vocalist and improviser based in San Francisco.
Teresa Carreño: Un rêve en mer, Op. 28 (1868)
Teresa Carreño was a prodigious Venezuelan pianist, composer, soprano, and conductor. She played piano for Abraham Lincoln in the White House at age 9 and studied with Franz Liszt and Charles Gonoud as a teenager in Paris. Carreño wrote Un rêve en mer or “A dream at sea" when she was just 15 years old.
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou: The homeless wanderer (1951)
Born Yewubdar Guèbrou, Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbrou (1923-2023), was an Ethiopian composer, pianist, and nun who composed an abundance of works, predominately for piano. Guèbrou describes the narrative of The homeless wanderer as: “The homeless wanderer plays on his flute, while he worries about the wilderness around his life. At night in the mountains, when people and animals rest after the day, one hears the song of a flute which the little wanderer plays, alone and far from home. The wild animals and snakes do not dare approach him, but listen spellbound to the melody his flute produces, which becomes its protector through the power of the notes. This he loses his fear of the nocturnal visitors. They become his friends."
Adelaide Pereira da Silva: Valse Choro No. 2 (1965)
Born in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Pereira da Silva was one of the founders of the Brazilian Pro Music Society, and many of her works reflect her study of Brazilian folk music. A short work for solo piano, Pereira da Silva’s Valse Choro No. 2 is a sensuously chromatic waltz – romantic yet harmonically adventurous.
Reena Esmail: Rang de Basant (2012)
Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music. The title Rang de Basant comes from a famous Hindi film, “Rang De Basanti” (literal translation: “Give it the color of Saffron”). In her program notes for Rang de Basant, she explains that “Basant means ‘spring’ in Hindi, but it couldn’t be further from the Western conception of the season.” Esmail describes Basant as feeling “dark and exotic, rendered in bold colors, and winding through passages of sinewy chromaticism.”
Chiquinha Gonzaga: Saudade (1896)
In 1896, Chiquinha Gonzaga traveled to the funeral of fellow Brazilian composer Carlos Gome and composed Saudade, which means “longing,” in his memory. However, she kept both the piece and the dedication secret. In 1932, a collection of choros (works for saxophone and flute) titled Alma Brasileira were published by Gonzaga’s companion, João Batista Gonzaga and the collection included Saudade. However, it took until 1998 for the work to be recorded for piano, by Clara Sverner.
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 “fiercely gifted” by The New York Times, is presented in concert by Point Reyes Dance Palace on August 16, 2025 at 2pm, Sarah will perform a program titled Mística, featuring vibrant and brilliant music composed by women of color through history and from around the world, including Gabriela Ortiz (Mexico), Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbrou (Ethiopia), Teresa Carreño (Venezuela), Margaret Bonds (USA), Tania León (Cuba/USA), Chiquinha Gonzaga (Brazil), and many more.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill
Presented by Point Reyes Dance Palace
What: Music for Solo Piano by Women Composers of Color from Throughout History and Around the World
When: Saturday, August 16, 2025 at 2pm
Where: Church Space, 503 B Street, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956
More information: www.dancepalace.org/event/sarah-cahill-concert/