Sarah Cahill: Tiny Desk Concert

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/18/ [login to see] /sarah-cahill-tiny-desk-concert
Pianist Sarah Cahill commands a near godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music. She's commissioned dozens of new works from today's top composers including John Adams, Julia Wolfe and Terry Riley. But when she sat down at the piano behind Bob Boilen's desk, she was focused not so much on new music but instead the plight of women composers.

While compositions by women are being heard slightly more often in concert halls over the past three years, historically the numbers have been pitiful. (In the 2018-19 season, both the Philadelphia and the Chicago Symphony Orchestras presented music by 55 different composers — none were women.)

Cahill is doing her part to remedy the situation. For this performance, she offers a sampler of The Future is Female, her multi-volume project that collects piano music by a staggeringly wide swath of women composers over a four-century span.

A spirited prelude by the short-lived Czech composer Vítězslava Kaprálová opens the set. She managed to write some 50 works before her death in 1940 at age 25. What a contrast to the fascinating, quirky music of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, the Ethiopian nun who lived to age 99. Poised for a career as a concert pianist, she turned to religious life and later wrote music in a singular style that includes off-kilter waltzes, odd syncopations, Ethiopian Orthodox chant and whiffs of blues.