Sarah Cahill, born in 1960 in Washington D.C., is an American pianist based in the Bay Area. She began her formal piano studies at age six and performed concertos with local orchestras by twelve. At sixteen, she played Bach’s D major Toccata at the Sommermusikwochen chamber music festival in Switzerland. Cahill skipped her final year of high school to join the San Francisco Conservatory, where John Adams composed "China Gates" for her. Cahill has commissioned, premiered, and recorded numerous works for solo piano, including compositions by Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, and Kyle Gann. In late 2008 and 2009, she developed and performed a project under two titles, A Sweeter Music and Notes on the War: The Piano Protests, which featured piano music on the subject of peace with contributions from composers such as Yoko Ono and Terry Riley.
