The Music of Lou Harrison: Stenberg|Cahill Duo with special guest Matthew Richmond
Saturday, April 22, 2023 at 7PM
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center {120 College Street}
TICKETS – $8 General Admission / Free for BMCM+AC members + Students w/ID

The Stenberg|Cahill Duo is dedicated to promoting the American experimental tradition and expanding it through the commissioning of new work. “Contemporary music fans are fortunate to have this simultaneously authoritative and approachable pair,” writes the San Francisco Classical Voice. Stenberg|Cahill Duo appearances include performances at the Mendocino Music Festival, San Francisco Performances PIVOT, Berkeley Chamber Performances, Cal State Fullerton New Music Festival, Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive, Mills College’s Music in the Fault Zone Festival, and Other Minds New Music Séance. In 2022, the duo premiered works composed for them by Roscoe Mitchell and Pamela Z. Z’s piece, Presence will have its east coast premiere in Boston in 2023. The Stenberg|Cahill Duo also recently premiered Norwegian composer Lars Petter Hagen’s work at the 26th annual Other Minds Festival in San Francisco.

Kate Sternberg

Kate Stenberg, a leading interpreter of contemporary chamber music, NewMusicBox describes her playing as “highly virtuosic and deeply communicative…full of character and presence”. As a champion of new music, Stenberg has premiered over one hundred solo and chamber works including works by Pamela Z, Gabriela Lena Frank, Peter Sculthorpe, Chinary Ung, Tania Leon, Charles Amirkhanian and Per Nørgård. Her recordings are available on New World Records, Sono Luminous, Newport Classics, New Albion and her latest CD release with Other Minds Records includes a world premiere recording of Lou Harrison’s Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin. Kate Stenberg’s passion for chamber music led her to develop and commission new chamber music as co-founder of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and Real Vocal String Quartet. For two decades she served as first violinist of the award winning Del Sol String Quartet, twice earning the top prize of Chamber Music America’s ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. In 2022, Stenberg founded The Mycos Project with Irene Sazer – a collective of multi-media artists, educators and scientists whose mission is to expand climate change awareness through the arts, ecological sciences and Indigenous practice. She has also collaborated and premiered work alongside choreographers Janice Garrett, Charles Moulton and Nancy Karp. She frequently plays in the San Francisco Symphony and can be heard on recordings with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, New Music Works, and with Maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.

Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Frederic Rzewski, Julia Wolfe, Mary D. Watkins, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF). Recent and upcoming appearances include the Barbican Centre, the Interlochen Arts Festival, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Newport Classics Festival, and the National Gallery of Art. In May she will premiere Viet Cuong’s new piano concerto with the California Symphony. Recent recordings include Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan, with Gamelan Galak Tika, released by the Cleveland Museum of Art. Her next recordings will be a Lou Harrison album for the Other Minds label and an Arlene Sierra album for Bridge Records. Sarah’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory, and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Matthew Richmond is a percussionist, composer, recording artist, and educator who can’t stick to one genre. He appears most frequently with Like Mind Trio and the Asheville Symphony Orchestra and has extensive experience in classical music, rock, funk, jazz, Latin music, and marching percussion. He contributed vibraphone and percussion to Infinity Plus One by Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, which won the 2017 Grammy Award for Best Children’s Album. He has also performed and/or recorded with Jonathan Scales, Steve Reich, Gordon Stout, Lizz Wright, Jeff Sipe, Billy Jonas, Kevin Spears, Kat Williams, and many others. Matthew loves musical theater, and has played more than 70 local and regional productions from Amélie to Zombie Prom. He served as music director of TheaterUNCA’s productions of Into the Woods and Marat/Sade, and for the latter he composed an original score. He has also composed and directed music for dance and drama performances by Asheville Ballet, Norte Marr, Black Swan Theatre, and The Road Company, and created the score for the feature film Flight of the Cardinal (Gaston Pictures).