Sarah Cahill is fond of San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kosman’s description of her as “a reigning diva of avant-garde pianism,” but she’s much more than a riveting pianist. She is new music’s foremost local champion, using her magnetic personality and her bully pulpit—as a radio host, concert presenter, commissioner of new works, and critic—to invite listeners into an often intimidating auditory world. “Everybody loves Sarah” is a common refrain in these parts, thanks to her work as the voice of Then & Now, a weekly Sunday-night show on KALW-FM, and her annual June presentation of Garden of Memory, which offers more than 30 performances at Oakland’s Chapel of the Chimes. For her next project, which premieres at UC Berkeley’s Hertz Hall next January, she commissioned works envisioning peace from such famed composers as Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, and Yoko Ono. The title of the program, A Sweeter Music, says it all.

Cahill's obsessions

Lucky charms: “I’ve worn the same pair of Karl Lagerfeld black nubuck shoes to nearly every performance I’ve given for the last 16 years. And I always wear something given to me by [my daughter] Miranda, my mother, or my husband.”

The pleasure principle: “I’m less interested in thorny, dissonant music that is complex just for the sake of complexity. I love music that resonates in the body physically, like Mamoru Fujieda’s Patterns of Plants. Whenever I play his music, people ask where they can get his CDs, because they want to hear it again and again.”

Our hero, Hiro: “Once a week, my family goes for sushi at Mitama on College Ave. The sushi chef, Hiro Tanabe, makes a special creation just for my daughter, called a Split Personality Roll, with different sorts of fish and vegetables each time. The man is an artist.”

Amoeba Music: “I love being surprised by what I find in the avant-garde section and in the bargain bins. I recently found an interesting William Billings CD for just $2.99.”

Immersion therapy: “When I practice the piano, I’m completely unaware of time going by. I forget to eat, I forget to take a shower.” (Cahill comes by this trait honestly: “When I was growing up, my father wrote books about Chinese art in his pajamas.”)