Presented by Sunset Piano, the founders of Flower Piano, in partnership with Grace Cathedral, Music for Twelve Pianos features Fall and Fly by Benjamin Gribble and the world premiere of Sweet Thunder by Paul Phillips. 

Sunset Piano will bring twelve grand pianos into the cathedral for live performances of these two original, full-length works, along with special guests Diana Gameros and George Long.

View the event program here.

Event Details

Doors open at 7 pm. The entrance to the cathedral is at the top of the Great Steps. The accessible entrance is via the glass doors on Taylor Street. 

This event is part of Spacious Grace, the cathedral’s annual free-form arts festival when we remove the pews and invoke the muse. Now in its ninth year, Spacious Grace runs from February 2 to 10. Explore the full lineup. 

About the Artists 

Benjamin Gribble is a composer and music teacher living in San Francisco who studied composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is very active in the Bay Area music community participating in Sunset Piano and Flower Piano in the San Francisco Botanical Gardens each summer. His work with these groups has been featured in the documentary “Twelve Pianos.” He also performs regularly as part of St. Larsen Duo alongside Esther Aeschbach, where they test the boundaries of modern notation, improvisation, noise making, and soon, electronic synthesis.

Paul Phillips, Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies and Associate Professor of Music at Stanford University, is a conductor, composer, pianist, and author who has conducted more than 75 orchestras, opera companies, and ballet troupes worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra and Choir, and Paul Taylor Dance Company. He has performed with Itzhak Perlman, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, and many other great classical and jazz soloists, and won 11 ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, working with Steve Reich, Philip Glass, William Bolcom, and many other leading composers. 

Sunset Piano is a collaboration of two multi-disciplinary artists, promoting piano culture and other good things in an increasingly complex world. Mauro ffortissimo is a painter, sculptor, musician, and poet, who brought the first Sunset Piano to the bluffs near his home in Half Moon Bay on a foggy night in February of 2013. mauroffortissimo.com. Dean Mermell is a filmmaker, musician, artist, and writer. He is project director for Sunset Piano, creator of the documentary film Twelve Pianos, and runs a small post-production studio called Storyfarm.  

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