Meet the Director

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
SARAH ROTHENBERG

Sarah Rothenberg is recognized internationally as a pianist of “power and introspection” (The New York Times) and “a prolific and creative thinker” (The Wall Street Journal). Committed to creating new audiences for classical music and jazz, and a firm believer in the accessibility of great music of all genres, Sarah Rothenberg has a unique career as pianist, writer, producer, and creator of interdisciplinary performances linking music to literature, visual art and ideas. A pianist of “heart, intellect and fabulous technical resources” (Fanfare), Rothenberg has performed at Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Great Performers at Lincoln Center (New York), Barbican Centre (London), The Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), Gilmore Piano Festival, 92nd Street Y, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Library of Congress, Van Cliburn Foundation, Ojai Festival and concert series across the United States.

Rothenberg collaborates frequently with composers, as both commissioner and performer. Recent world premieres include two major solo works composed for her by Vijay Iyer and 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winner Tyshawn Sorey, as well as Sorey’s Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) at Rothko Chapel, named by The New York Times and The New Yorker as one of the top ten classical performances of 2022, and followed by performances at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in a staging by director Peter Sellars. In addition to her DACAMERA performances, recent highlights include performances in Lisbon, Brussels, Paris, Los Angeles and New York with cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton of D’est en musique, created with filmmaker Chantal Akerman; as well as solo recitals at the Frick Collection (New York), Monday Evening Concerts (LA), Phillips Collection (DC) and the Big Ears Festival.

Original productions conceived, directed and performed by Sarah Rothenberg include A Proust Sonata, which received its New York premiere to critical acclaim in 2018; In the Garden of Dreams, capturing fin-de-siècle Vienna in music, art, ideas; The Blue Rider: Kandinsky and Music, commissioned and produced by Works & Process at The Guggenheim and Columbia University’s Miller Theater; and Chopin in Paris: Epigraph for a Condemned Book (Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven; University Musical Society, Ann Arbor; Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Champaign-Urbana). Her film, The Departing Landscape, a COVID-era memorial featuring Morton Feldman’s Palais de Mari, received national attention in its 2020-21 streaming premiere. Sarah Rothenberg’s Music and the Literary Imagination series was presented by Great Performers at Lincoln Center for five consecutive seasons. Moondrunk, a staging of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, inaugurated Lincoln Center’s New Visions series in 1999. She appeared as soloist in over 75 performances of choreographer/director Martha Clarke’s Cheri at New York’s Signature Theatre, Ravenna Festival, Kennedy Center, and London’s Royal Opera House. Her lectures and performances on art and music include The Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum (New York), Museum of Fine Arts Houston and The Menil Collection.

In recordings, 2026 brought the release of her new solo album, In Darkness and Light, as well as Sorey’s Monochromatic Light (Afterlife), both on DACAMERA Editions, with Sorey’s For Julius Eastman forthcoming in 2027.  

Sarah Rothenberg’s scholarly research has resulted in her U.S. premiere performances and recordings of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Das Jahr (Award for Best Solo Classical Recording 1996); Rediscovering the Russian Avant-Garde: Lourié, Mosolov and Roslavetz (GM); and Shadows and Fragments: Piano Works of Brahms and Schoenberg. She is featured in the new British documentary, Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn (2023). Additional recordings include Messiaen Visions de l’Amen and DACAMERA’s Rothko Chapel: Satie, Cage and Feldman on ECM, as well as works of Charles Wuorinen, Elliott Carter, Shulamit Ran, George Perle, Tobias Picker, Joan Tower and George Tsontakis, in collaboration with the composers. Sarah Rothenberg’s writings appear in literary, art and musical publications, including The Musical Quarterly, Brick, Nexus, TriQuarterly, Conjunctions, The Threepenny Review, PN Review (UK), Perspectives in New Music, The Crisis of Criticism, Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings and Cy Twombly: Treatise on the Veil.

 Prior to coming to DACAMERA, Sarah Rothenberg co-founded the Bard Music Festival. She has taught at Columbia University’s School of the Arts MFA Writing Program, Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts, and was Senior Fellow at the New School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics in New York.

 Sarah Rothenberg’s early training was at The Juilliard School with Herbert Stessin. After graduating from The Curtis Institute of Music, where her teachers were Seymour Lipkin and Mieczeslaw Horszowski, she studied the music of Olivier Messiaen in Paris with the composer’s wife, Yvonne Loriod. Sarah Rothenberg received the French government’s Medal of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters.