Pianist Sarah Cahill is a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area's avant-garde scene and has worked closely with composer Terry Riley for many years. She is also a radio show host, writer, and educator.

Cahill was born in 1960 in Washington, D.C. Her family moved to Berkeley, California, when she was six, as her father, James Cahill, took a post as professor of Chinese art history at the University of California. Sarah took up the piano at six, and by 12, she was performing concertos with Bay Area orchestras. At 16, she traveled to Switzerland for a performance at the Sommermusikwoche festival. Cahill left high school prior to her senior year to enroll at the San Francisco Conservatory; while she was a student there, John Adams wrote the work China Gates for her. She went on to the University of Michigan for further studies with Theodore Lettvin.

Returning to the San Francisco area, she was the recipient of dedications for new works from a large variety of composers. In addition to Adams and Riley, these have included Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, and Annea Lockwood. Often Cahill has commissioned new music for thematic programs, including A Sweeter Music (on the theme of peace), Playdate, and Garden of Memory. She formed the Bay Area Pianists organization in 1993 and four years later made her recording debut on the New Albion label with an album of music by Ravel. The rest of her recordings have been devoted to contemporary music, and she has continued to record for New Albion and for the Other Minds and Irritable Hedgehog label. Cahill is a writer about music who has contributed liner notes to albums by various contemporary composers and written reviews and columns for the East Bay Express, San Francisco Chronicle, ClassicsToday.com, and other publications. She is the host of a weekly radio show on Berkeley radio station KPFA and teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory. Cahill continued to perform, often outdoors, through the coronavirus pandemic. In December of 2021, she performed a seven-hour marathon of music by women at the Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive, commissioning new works from Regina Harris Baiocchi, Mary Watkins, and Theresa Wong. That year, Cahill was heard as pianist with the ensemble Gamelan Galak Tika in a recording of Lou Harrison's Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan. ~ James Manheim, Rovi