Winner of The American Prize for Chamber Music Performance in 2021 contemporary chamber music group Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
consists of award-winning soprano, Artistic Executive Director and co-founder Nanette McGuinness, cellist and season graphic designer Megan Chartier, pianist Margaret Halbig, and composer, co-founder, and Senior Artistic Advisor David Garner,
plus fine guest artists.
Mission
Ensemble for These Times focuses on 20th and 21st century music that is relevant, engaging, original, and compelling, music that resonates today and will speak to tomorrow. E4TT strongly believes in the power of artistic beauty, intelligence, wit, lyricism, and irony to create a deep understanding of our times and the human condition. Women creators are an ongoing primary focus.
Racial Equity Statement
Historically, privilege, power, and access have been granted unequally in our nation. This is particularly true in the arts. As an artist-led group, Ensemble for These Times acknowledges that racial equity is essential for keeping contemporary classical chamber music vital, creative, and connected in the 21st century. E4TT is committed to an inclusive, equitable, and diverse practice, and to ensuring that all communities, including those that have been historically underrepresented based on race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or any other factor, are represented in our artistic decisions and programming.
History
E4TT formed in 2007/2008 when soprano Nanette McGuinness and David Garner met during recording sessions at Skywalker Ranch; it quickly grew to include pianist Dale Tsang and then cellist Anne Lerner. Today the group consists of award-winning soprano/ Artistic Executive Director Nanette McGuinness, cellist/ Graphic Designer Megan Chartier, pianist Margaret Halbig, and co-founder/ Senior Artistic Advisor composer David Garner, plus regular substitute cellist/ Social Media Assistant Abigail Monroe and a number fine regular guest musicians. E4TT made its international debut in Berlin in 2012; was
sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Budapest for a four-city tour of Hungary in 2014 as part of the Daniel Pearl World Music; and performed at the Krakow Culture Festival in 2016 and 2022, and
at the Conservatorio Teresa Berganza in Madrid in 2017. In California, E4TT has performed at the Paderewski Festival, the LAMOTH, UCLA, and in the SF Bay Area at the German Consulate General, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Old First Concerts, JCC Peninsula, Trinity Chamber Concerts, and
Noontime Concerts, among other venues. In July 2024, E4TT released its fifth album, Emigres & Exiles in Hollywood--favorites from its multi-year exploration of music by the many talented composers who fled persecution during WWII for Hollywood, changing movie music as we know it. The group's other five albums have all medaled in the Global Music Awards: The Guernica Project (2022),
commemorating the 85th anniversary of the horrific carpet bombing of civilians and Picasso's masterwork in response; Once/Memory/Night: Paul Celan (2020), honoring the centennial of the seminal 20th-century poet; The Hungarians: From Rozsa to Justus (2018), with works by
Hungarian emigre Miklos Rozsa, and three of his compatriots who perished in the Holocaust; and Surviving: Women's Words, (2016), new music to poetry by women Holocaust survivors. E4TT has produced a podcast of weekly conversations with women and marginalized creatives, For Good Measure since 2022.
Commissions
The ensemble has commissioned 61 new works and 4 arrangements for premiere in the U.S. and Europe and has awarded four student composition prizes. Major commissioning projects include "Expression: Ism" (new music celebrating the sesquicentennial of seminal 20th composer Arnold Schoenberg), "Fractured Light," "Dark Universe/ Mysterious Spaces" (new music inspired by outer and terrestrial space), "The Cassandra Project," (new music inspired by the Greek myth of this famous woman, cursed to foretell the truth but never be believed), "Mothers & Daughters," the "Film Noir Project" (E4TT's homage to all things musical and film noir), The "Guernica" Project (commemorating the 80th anniversary of Picasso's iconic painting "Guernica," which itself commemorated the horrific bombing of the eponymous Spanish town); "Once/Memory/Night: Paul Celan" (new music focusing on the world and works of seminal 20th century poet Paul Celan); Surviving: Women's Words" (four new song cycles by David Garner to texts by women Holocaust survivors, which became the group's first CD); and "Women's Love and Loss" (three new works by women composers focusing on lost love in women's lives, to poetry by Lucille Clifton, Robert Frost, and Robinson Jeffers).
Calls for Scores
Calls for Scores are part of E4TT's core mission.
In E4TT's first Call for Scores in December 2015-January 2016, the group received 275 scores by 200 composers, choosing 56 by 54 composers for a multi-year performance series entitled 56x54 that ran from 2016-2019.
The group has also commissioned a number of those composers to write for the group since 2016. The group's 15th anniversary season Call for Scores for piano (only) took place in July 2022,
with 56 scores by 35 composers received and 9 nine scores chosen for performance on a solo recital by pianist emerita Dale Tsang on February 25, 2023; the solo piano Call for Scores has become an annual event, with Calls held in July 2024, yielding 110 scores from 50 composers and June 2026, yielding 155 scores from 89 composers.
In 2025, we had a pilot collaboration with the Ross McKee Foundation for a "New Music Piano Summit," with a Call for Scores for piano for hands as part of this initiative.
Finally, we have held two two-year collaborations with Luna Composition Lab alums, one in 2023-24, with a Call for Scores in June 2023 in which we chose six works to perform in January 2024 and 2025 and commissioned two of the alums to write new works for us for premiere in January 2025.
In our second, current collaboration with Luna Labs--part of their Tenth Anniversary Celebration, LunaLab@10--we held a Call for Scores in 2025, choosing one work to perform in January 2026 and commissioning three alums to write works for us for premiere in January 2027.
E4TT's 2026/27 season is sponsored, in part, by a grant from the
Alice M. Ditson Fund. Hollywood Exiles & Modern Noir is supported, in part, by a grant from the
Tulipán Foundation. Call for Scores: Solo Piano, Vol. 3 is supported in part by the Ross McKee Foundation and 2025 Luna Labs Call for Scores is part of a two-year collaboration with Luna Composition Lab for LunaLab@10.
Exile | Banishment | Home and Hollywood Exiles & Modern Noir are co-presented by KlezCalifornia. HOME is a collaboration with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Composition Department. Ensemble for These Times is honored to be a fiscally sponsored affiliate of the
InterMusic SF, a non-profit organization dedicated to small-ensemble music in the San Francisco Bay Area.
We are grateful to our supporters and partners:
Ensemble for These Times is honored to be a fiscally sponsored affiliate of the InterMusic SF, a non-profit organization dedicated to small-ensemble music in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Megan Chartier, cello 
Margaret Halbig, piano
Nanette McGuinness, soprano
