Advisory Group

Pianist | writer | producer | radio DJ and cultural animator Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times and “a brilliant and charismatic advocate for modern and contemporary composers” by Time Out New York, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. Keyboard Magazine writes, “Through her inspired interpretation of works across the 20th and 21st centuries, Cahill has been instrumental in bringing to life the music of many of our greatest living composers.” She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).

Sarah enjoys working closely with composers, musicologists, and scholars to prepare scores for each performance. She researched and recorded music by prominent early 20th-century American modernists Henry Cowell and Ruth Crawford and commissioned a number of new pieces in tribute to their enduring influence. She has also premiered and recorded music by Leo Ornstein, Marc Blitzstein, and other 20th century mavericks. Her ongoing "The Future is Female" has receiving international acclaim.

"Spinet Farewell," her inspired concert at the Albany Bulb debuted our series during the early days of the Caronavirus Pandemic. She also performed and co-produced Alternating Currents' "HEAR TOGETHER" on Mother's Day 2021 at the Crowden School.

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Olivia Ting is a HOH visual artist whose works span audiovisual site-specific installations, projection design, and graphic design. Her installation work explores the liminal separation between understanding and not understanding of sounds due to incomplete spectrum of hearing. She currently holds an art residency with Leonardo Arts + Science publications CripTech Incubator, an art-and-technology fellowship centered on disability innovation. Concurrently, she is also a resident of Thoughtworks Arts, a global creative research laboratory that incubate artist and technologist collaborations exploring impacts of emerging technologies on society.

Her current project explores the parallels between the movements and spatiality of sign language and music conducting. Wearing a hearing aid on one ear and cochlear implant on the other, what are the poetics of meaning lying in sounds lost amidst disruptive hearing and algorithms of assistive hearing devices?

Trained as a classical pianist, she also explores the parallels between herself as a performer and the piano as sound-making bodies.

Olivia received her MFA in Art Practice from U.C. Berkeley.

With collaborator Annetta Jannotta, she produced "Sonic Dogness," a site-specific installation that featured her sound work, "Sonic Dogscape."

RAQUEL BAKER MFA, PHD is an Associate Professor at California State University Channel Islands, where she teaches creative writing and literatures of Africa and the African diaspora.

Her research focuses on representations of Oakland in speculative fiction.

NOAH FACTOR is currently a recent graduate fro the University of Southern California Music Industry Program.

Operaating with passion at the intersection of music, film, and television, he is currently working at Interscope RecordLos Angeles in the Industry.

He has worked with a number of artists, helping with marketing and promotion, including in an Alternating Currents summer 2023 fellowship.