Cahill/Myers Duo performs new and mid-20th century works for piano

Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers return to the Dresher Studio to perform music for two pianos and four hands, including Tonk! by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington, Sprites in the Large Camphor Tree by Mamoru Fujieda, Hanna Kulenty's VAN, Colin McPhee's Balinese Ceremonial Music, and UP by Riley Nicholson.

Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times and “a brilliant and charismatic advocate for modern and contemporary composers” by Time Out New York, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers with dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. Keyboard Magazine writes, “Through her inspired interpretation of works across the 20th and 21st centuries, Cahill has been instrumental in bringing to life the music of many of our greatest living composers.” She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF). www.sarahcahill.info

Regina Myers studied piano performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Mills College. In 2004 she founded the concert series/performing collective New Keys to surface and promote the newest and most innovative music for the piano. Regina prides herself on expanding the reach of new music by commissioning new works and relishes working with emerging composers as well as keeping seminal new music masterpieces alive. www.reginamusic.com

Photos by Miranda Sanborn

Composers

Cahill has long been an enthusiastic supporter of Mamoru Fujieda’s work, playing a central role in the post-minimalist composer’s Pattern of Plants, receiving a solo piano recording for the first time outside of Japan when Cahill recorded the music on Pinna Records in 2014. Cahill’s performance on the recording was widely praised, with I Care If You Listen saying, "Sarah Cahill expertly interprets and gives a clear voice to Fujieda's beautiful work." The New York Times describes the music as “Delicate miniatures that unfold quietly and calmly.”

Jamaican-born British composer Eleanor Alberga wrote 3-Day Mix in 1991. Alberga explains her work 3-Day Mix: “As implied by the title, 3-Day Mix was written in 3 days when, with concise notice, an opportunity to compose a piano duet for a concert came about in 1991.  This work contains jazzy elements, but the melodic lines over ostinato figures appear in all my other ‘light’ works.  It lasts about 9 minutes and is meant to be no more than a fun piece.” 

Riley Nicholson says of his four-movement epic work: “Up’s one unifying theme is simply that: ‘up.’  The piece moves ‘up’ in so many directions: literally, opening with an upward motif that gets pinged between pianos in a groovy, dizzying counterpoint; gradually with increasing frequency moving up the circle of fifths; with upbeat syncopations and tempi; constantly one-upping itself with a burgeoning energy that trips over itself with virtuosic fits; and many other upward motions and themes. Up is a manic trip exploring joyous energy and that darker underbelly of positivity when energy and motion become simply too much to be contained.” 

Writer Jed Distler, who transcribed the version of Tonk to be performed in this program, says of the piece: “Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn enjoyed playing impromptu piano duets in informal situations, which directly resulted in Tonk. Credited to both men but written by Strayhorn, they recorded it in 1945 as a piano duet and again in 1950 with two pianos.  Nurit Tilles and Edmund Niemann commissioned my two-piano transcription of Tonk for Double Edge, combining both recorded versions."

Polish composer Hanna Kulenty composed "VAN..." in 2014 at the request of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Warsaw on the occasion of the State Visit of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands.  It premiered during the Warsaw Autumn Festival.  "VAN..." playfully explores minimalist patterns during which the pianists' hands collide as they continue each other's patterns.

Colin McPhee (1900-1964) was both a composer and an academic. His musical style has come to be known for an acute sensitivity to specific timbres and an appreciation for complex rhythmic textures. A three-movement work, each of the sections of Balinese Ceremonial Music was arranged between 1934 and 1938. The two pianos heard together in the music manifest a type of ringing—much like the metallophones of the gamelan—effortlessly imparting a sonic quality of the gamelan to the instrumental medium of the piano.

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