Free Marathon Performance to be Held for Female Composers' Works

The Future is Female is a free public event examining and reframing the piano literature of over 70 compositions by women around the world from 1707 to now. Presented across 6 hours, it will also include newly commissioned works.

Pianist Sarah Cahill began developing this project 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 said in the press release. 

“Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of color,” she added. “It is still standard practice to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men.”

On March 5 from 12 PM to 8 PM, London’s Barbican Conservatory located in the Barbican Center will host six hours of music, with each hour programmed with music by female composers from different time periods.

The event will conclude with a panel discussion at 7:30 PM with artists and curators reflecting on the themes of the day. Additionally, this performance celebrates the Barbican’s 40th birthday and role as an internationally-acclaimed venue.

Those attending the marathon performance are invited to come and go throughout the day. World premieres by Arlene Sierra and Errollyn Wallen will be heard as well as over 40 pieces by composers such as Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Teresa Carreño, Florence Price, Kaija Saariaho, Eleanor Alberga, Anna Meredith, and Hannah Kendall, among many others.

Cahill will also be performing four-hand and two-piano works with pianists from Guildhall School of Music & Drama for the event. 

In tandem with the performance, she will also be releasing the first album in a planned three-volume series, titled The Future is Female, Vol. 1, In Nature on March 4, 2022, on First Hand Records.

Based loosely on themes of nature, this album will be followed later this year by Vol. 2: At Play and Vol. 3: The Dance.

The March 5 event is also “partly a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment [to the U.S. Constitution] which gave women the right to vote.” For full event details and program of the marathon, click here.

Described by the NY Times as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” and by Time Out NY as “a brilliant and charismatic advocate for modern and contemporary composers,” Cahill has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. 

Composers who have dedicated works to her include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Yoko Ono, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. In 2018, she was named a Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).