Berkeley-born-and-raised Sarah Cahill combines a flourishing career as a new music pianist with a seemingly unstoppable desire to turn others onto the music she loves. The eclecticism of the repertoire on her weekly Sunday night KALW-FM radio show, Then and Now, reflects the breadth of imagination that makes the Bay Area great. (That KPFA-FM ditched Cahill’s show and most other classical and New Music programming in the name of populism was an act of narrow-minded ignorance, and a complete contradiction of the station’s goals to expand rather than contract consciousness). Cahill’s championing of women composers, commissioning of peace-themed works from composers as diverse as Yoko Ono and Terry Riley, annual promotion of the New Music Bay Area’s incredible Garden of Memory summer solstice new music extravaganza at the Chapel of the Chimes, and brilliant written performance notes and commentary merely hint at her innumerable contributions to our cultural scene.
.Best One-Woman Arts Booster
Sarah Cahill