Museum of Art brings piano and video duo to The Empire Art Center Pianist Sarah Cahill and high-definition television pioneer John Sanborn, both stars in contemporary video and music, will present at the Empire Art Center at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 1. They are in Grand Forks as part of the North Dakota Museum of Art symposium on Human Rights. Referred to by The New York Times as a “fiercely gifted Bay Area pianist,” Cahill will perform from her most recent long-term project for which she commissioned 18 composers to write new works envisioning peace. Cahill’s title, "A Sweeter Music," comes from Martin Luther King’s 1965 Nobel Prize lecture: “We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.” Cahill will perform against the backdrop of a three-screen video presentation by her collaborating husband, John Sanborn. Hailed as “the acknowledged genius in the field” by Peter Ackroyd in Vogue magazine, John Sanborn is a video artist and director whose works have been shown at almost every major museum in the world, including New York’s Whitney Museum; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Prado, Madrid; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Seibu Museum, Tokyo. His video works have been broadcast worldwide, including sixteen half-hours for PBS featuring collaborations with Bill T. Jones, Philip Glass, Twyla Tharp, The Residents, and David Gordon. A dance work created for Great Performances starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and directed by Sanborn won three Emmy Awards. Born into a musical and academic family in Washington, D.C., at the age of five, Sarah Cahill moved to California when her father, James Cahill, became professor of Chinese Art History at University of California Berkeley. He is one of the world’s leading scholars of Chinese painting. Cahill’s father owned an extensive collection of records, including rare historical recordings of composers and pianists such as Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartok, Artur Schnabel, Walter Gieseking and Clara Haskil. Cahill is a renowned performer of new American music who has commissioned, premiered and recorded numerous works for solo piano. Compositions dedicated to her include John Adams’ China Gates, Frederic Rzewski’s Snippets 2, Pauline Oliveros’ Quintuplets Play Pen, and Kyle Gann's Private Dances and On Reading Emerson. She has also premiered works by Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Evan Ziporyn, Julia Wolfe, Ingram Marshall, Ursula Mamlok, George Lewis, Leo Ornstein and many others. Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for adults, children 12 and under admitted free. Museum Concert Series season ticket holders will be admitted free. Following the concert, there will be a reception for Cahill at the Toasted Frog—cash bar. Suggested donation for admission to the Museum is $5 for adults and change from children. For more information, visit http://www.ndmoa.com/ . -- Brian Lofthus, assistant to the director, North Dakota Museum of Art, blofthus@ndmoa.com, 777-4195