Sarah Bob

Pianist Sarah Bob is an important performer, organizer, and educator in the field of avant-garde music in the U.S. Northeast. She has often been heard in performance and on recordings as a member of BMOP, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Bob was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, which, she points out in a biography for children appearing on her website, was also the home of the character Bob on the television program Sesame Street. Her teacher in Teaneck was Marilyn Arons. Bob attended the University of Michigan, graduating with honors, and went on to the New England Conservatory of Music for a master's degree. There she worked with and became known to a variety of figures in the Boston-area experimental music scene. She won not only the Conservatory's Outstanding Alumnus Award but also the International Gaudeamus Competition in the Netherlands (2001), and she began to get solo bookings in top venues including the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston, and Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York. A passionate advocate for new music, Bob has performed not only with BMOP but also with other contemporary music ensembles in the Boston area including Dinosaur Annex, the Callithumpian Consort, and the Microtonal Society. She is especially notable as an organizer and administrator, having served as Director of Classical Music at the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Georgia; she is the creator of The Nasty Cooperative, which, she says, consists of "numerous dialogue-driven artistic events created to build community, and help raise funds for organizations in need." Bob is a member of several contemporary music-oriented chamber groups including the Primary Duo, in which her partner is her percussionist husband, Aaron Trant. She has taught a recurring course on "The Power of Art" at the Longy School of Music at Bard College in upstate New York. In 2019, Bob served as Artist-in-Residence at The Music Mansion in Rhode Island. Along with appearances as part of BMOP and other chamber groups, Bob has been featured on several albums on the Avie label: Lift (2015) was devoted to the music of composer Elena Ruehr, and Nobody Move (2019) included commissions that had been heard during Bob's own "New Gallery Concert Series" events.
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