Joseph Kubera & Sarah Cahill perform premieres of four-hand works by Terry Riley
Described as “two dynamite pianists with very different styles- the elegantly precise Joseph Kubera, the passionately mercurial Sarah Cahill” by Kyle Gann in the Village Voice, Kubera and Cahill first performed together in 1997 in the premiere of Terry Riley’s Cinco de Mayo, commissioned for a Henry Cowell centennial festival presented by Cal Performances in Berkeley, California. They have since appeared as a duo at Cooper Union and at Greenwich House Music School in New York, Royce Hall at UCLA (for a Terry Riley birthday celebration), at Bard College, at the inaugural Edge Fest at Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley,at the Triptych Festival in Edinburgh, and at the Pacific Crossings Festival in Tokyo and Kanazawa, Japan. Terry Riley, Ingram Marshall, Larry Polansky, and Michael Byron are among the composers who have written for them, and they have recorded together for the New Albion and Cold Blue labels.
JOSEPH KUBERA has been a leading interpreter of contemporary music for the past twenty-five years. In 2007, he was a featured performer with the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble at Zankel Hall, premiered and recorded Michael Byron’s Dreamers of Pearl in New York, and directed a performance of Julius Eastman’s multiple-piano music in Newcastle, England. Among the composers who have written works for him are Michael Byron, Anthony Coleman, David First, Alvin Lucier, Roscoe Mitchell, and “Blue” Gene Tyranny. A longtime Cage performer, he recorded the Music of Changes and Piano Concert, and toured with the Cunningham Dance Company at Cage’s invitation. He is a core member of S.E.M. Ensemble, the DownTown Ensemble and Ostravska Banda, and he has performed with a wide range of New York ensembles, from Steve Reich and Musicians to the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Mr. Kubera’s solo playing may be heard on the Wergo, Albany, New Albion, New World, Lovely Music, O.O. Discs, Mutable Music, Cold Blue, and Opus One labels. His website is www.josephkubera.com.
Hailed as “that golden-haired Valkyrie of new music” in the Charleston City Paper, SARAH CAHILL has commissioned, premiered, and recorded numerous compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to her include John Adams, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Kyle Gann, and Evan Ziporyn, and she has also premiered pieces by Lou Harrison, Julia Wolfe, Ingram Marshall, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Ursula Mamlok, George Lewis, Leo Ornstein, and many others. She has performed at the Tokyo Summer Festival, the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, and at the Spoleto Festival USA. Recent appearances include the Santa Fe New Music series, a Cold Blue festival at REDCAT Theater in Los Angeles, and the Nuovi Spazi Musicali festival in Rome. For a “new music séance” produced by Other Minds, she performed three separate concert programs back to back, spanning music from the early 20th century to the present day. Sarah has recorded for the New Albion, Tzadik, CRI, New World, Albany, Artifact, and Cold Blue labels. She is currently preparing recordings of music by Leo Ornstein, Kyle Gann, and Mamoru Fujieda.
