An Homage to Sarah Cahill

The pianist Sarah Cahill has been thinking about grief over the death of loved ones and a sense of loss as the United States government dismantles its already threadbare support of the arts with the closing of the Kennedy Center, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and other cultural institutions. For Monday's SF Conservatory of Music Faculty Artist recital on the 11th floor of the Bowes Center, she performed a recital entitled No Ordinary Light consisting of a series of homages to various dead people. Looking at the program, I feared it was going to be a succession of dirges, but instead the selections were extremely eclectic, ranging from the 17th century harpsichord piece Tombeau de Mr.de Chambonnieres by Jean-Henri d'Anglebert to the 2025 Prelude: Hammer the Sky Bright by Samuel Adams commemorating composer Ingram Marshall, complete with a recording of wind and foghorns nestled in the piano strings.

Also on the program: the 1972 Hommage à Fauré by Robert Helps (click here for the wonderful Robert Helps Web Monument created by adoring colleagues); the 1990 Homage to William Dawson by Zenobia Powell Perry, the evening's audience favorite with its jazzy rhythms; two pieces by Lou Harrison, the 1952 Fugue to David Tudor written in an uncharacteristic twelve-tone style and a lilting tune for the 1948 Hommage à Milhaud.

Cahill commissioned both the Samuel Adams piece and the 2001 Holding Pattern by composer Maggi Payne in honor of Ruth Crawford Seeger. It involved putting small, battery-operated clamps over three strings which are then somehow manipulated into strange tones operated through the pedals. "I can't believe they still work after all this time," Cahill told us. The piece was very strange but sort of fabulous.

The finale was Maurice Ravel's 1917 Le tombeau de Couperin, with each of its six movements dedicated to friends who had just perished in World War One. The orchestrated version seems to be on the program at the SF Symphony every other month, but this was the first time hearing the original piano version. Though I still don't quite get the work, it is obviously a favorite piece of music for Cahill and many others. Maybe one day I'll feel it.