Sarah Cahill with special guest Stuart Canin – November 13, 2015

Sarah Cahill, piano
with special guest Stuart Canin, violin

Brahms Sonata in A major, Op. 100
Prokofiev Sonata in D major, Op. 94
Stravinsky Duo Concertant
and other works

Violinist Stuart Canin and Sarah Cahill join forces for an evening of Brahms, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, as well as various bonbons from Fritz Kreisler and others. Stuart Canin studied Stravinsky’s Duo Concertant with Samuel Dushkin, the works dedicatee and frequent Stravinsky collaborator, so he performs the piece with special insight. The former Concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Opera, Stuart Canin was a founder of New Century Chamber Orchestra in San Francisco. He was the first recitalist to perform on the Heifetz Guarnerius violin given to the City of San Francisco after the death of the famed Jascha Heifetz, and had the distinction of playing a command performance at the Potsdam Conference for U.S. President Truman, British Prime Minster Churchill, and Russian Premier Josef Stalin. He has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Oberlin Conservatory of Music. In 1970 Seiji Ozawa appointed him Concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony, where he remained for ten years, and in 1992 he founded the New Century Chamber Orchestra. Sarah Cahill is very proud to be in residence at Old First Concerts this season. She was recently called “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. Composers who have dedicated works to her include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Annea Lockwood, and Evan Ziporyn. Recent appearances include a concert at San Quentin of the music Henry Cowell wrote while incarcerated there, Lou Harrison’s Piano Concerto with Steven Schick and the La Jolla Symphony, four performances at the San Francisco Symphony’s Soundbox, a residency at Dickinson College, and concerts in Maui, Miami, and at MIT. She is in the process of recording a two-CD set of Terry Riley’s solo and four-hand music with pianist Regina Schaffer for the Irritable Hedgehog label. Her radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and will curate a monthly series of new music concerts at the new Berkeley Art Museum when it opens in early 2016. For more information, please visit sarahcahill.com.