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 Abigail Monroe, pianist Margaret Halbig,
and composer, co-founder, and Senior Artistic Advisor David Garner, plus regular guest artists that include
Ilana Blumberg, violin, Laura Reynolds, English horn,
and Chelsea Hollow, coloratura soprano and other fine guest artists each season. Guest artists in our 14th season (2021/22) also include
Mika Nakamura, percussion, Yuchen Liu, double bass, and
Tin Yi Chelsea Wong, piano.
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.
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.
History
The ensemble was 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. Recent performance highlights include a tour to Madrid, Spain, in Fall 2017 and at the 2016 Krakow Culture Festival in Poland. Past highlights include a four-city tour to Hungary in Fall 2014 as part of the Daniel Pearl World Music Days and sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Budapest; the world premiere of Garner’s Chanson für Morgen in 2011 at Trinity Chamber Concerts, supported in part by a grant from the East Bay Fund for Artists and produced in association with the 26th Jewish Music Festival; the European premiere of Chanson für Morgen in Berlin in 2012, with the Jüdische Gemeinde Berlin, and concerts at the German Consulate General in SF, Old First Concerts, Peninsula JCC, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Trinity Chamber and Noontime Concerts, among others. From its inception, E4TT has had a strong, ongoing commitment to new music by women composers or with texts by women writers, as well as by emerging and less-known composers.
Call for Scores
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.
Recordings
E4TT's debut CD, Surviving: Women’s Words, was released on the Centaur label in 2016 and won a Silver Medal in the 2016 Global Music Awards. Writing at Examiner.com, Stephen Smoliar called Mr. Garner’s settings of poetry by Jewish women Holocaust survivors “fascinating,” “passionate,” and “highly compelling;” Erin Heisel of American Record Guide also called it “fascinating,” and “compelling,” and Grego Applegate Edwards reviewed it (at Gapplegate Classical-Modern Review) as, “…extremely well done. Recommended.” Finally, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke wrote (The Whole Note) “Now more than ever, as the U.S. experiences a déjà vu of hatred and is poised on the brink of societal unravelling, the potent and timeless messages of survival, love, tolerance and forgiveness contained on this brilliant presentation need to resonate throughout the world.”
E4TT’s second recording, "The Hungarians: From Rozsa to Justus" was released on Centaur Records on April 6, 2018 as a digital EP and won a Gold Medal in the 2018 Global Music Awards. The CD consists of music by three Hungarian and one Hungarian-American composers who were exiled or killed in the Holocaust: multiple-Oscar-recipient Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995), Sándor Vándor (1901-1945), Lajos Delej (1923-1945), and György Justus (1898-1945). Featuring duos for cello and piano by Rozsa and Vandor--plus a Scherzo from a missing cello sonata attributed to Delej--songs by Vandor and Justus for soprano and piano, and the premiere recording of a recently rediscovered set of piano miniatures by Delej, the CD is the result of the group’s successful four-city concert tour in Hungary in 2014, which was sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Budapest.
E4TT's third recording, "Once/Memory/Night: Paul Celan," was released on June 30, 2020. Immediately chosen for the Center for New Music's Album of the Week, the CD consists of three E4TT ccommissions, plus a fourth relevant work: “Die eichne Tür” (The Oaken Door),by E4TT composer and co-founder David Garner to poems by Paul Celan, including "Espenbaum” (Aspen tree), the poet's heartrending reflection on his survival and his mother’s death; "Nachtlang" (Nightlong) by Jared Redmond (b. 1986), setting Celan’s “Notturno” (Night) and “Einmal” (Once); "A Song on the End of the World" by Stephen Eddins (b. 1954), setting a poem by Celan’s Nobel Prize-winning contemporary, Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) and including a reading of the poem by the translator and poet's son Anthony Milosz; “4 ½” for solo piano, by world-renowned composer Libby Larsen (b. 1950). A suite for solo piano, “4 ½” includes “In Memoriam,” “an elegy for departed, beloved ones.” “Once/Memory/Night: Paul Celan” honors the centennial of the birth of one of the most important post-WWII poets, who greatly influenced 20th Century European literature. Born to a German-speaking Romanian Jewish family, Celan (1920-1970) was profoundly affected by the rise of Nazism. His parents perished in a concentration camp and he barely survived a forced labor camp, only to commit suicide in 1970. His poems—written in German, his mother tongue—speak to his experience of loss, imprisonment, and survival under a brutal regime and the themes in his work—the rise of fascism, "strong men" leaders, and nations marching to the drumbeat of nationalism—deeply resonate today with the global right-wing resurgence. These themes are the force behind “Once/Memory/Night.”
E4TT will release The "Guernica" Project in spring 2022.
Commissions
The ensemble has commissioned 32 new works and two arrangements for premiere in the U.S. and Europe. Major commissioning projects include "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).
Repertory
In addition to commissions, the group's repertory has included works by:
21st century composers: John Adams, Elinor Armer, Victoria Bond, Chen Yi, Anna Clyne, David Conte, Stephen Eddins, Tom Flaherty, Gabriela Lena Frank, Vivian Fung, Stacy Garrop, Osvaldo Golijov, Arthur Gottschalk, John Harbison, Alden Jenks, Juliana Hall, Martyna Kosecka, Lori Laitman, Emma Logan, Ruth Lomon, Lennie Moore, Missy Mazzoli, Polina Nazaykinskaya, James Primosch, Jared Redmond, Elena Ruehr, Judith Shatin, Heather Schmidt, Laura Schwendinger Sarah Kirkland Snyder, Greg A. Steinke, Brennan Stokes, Aleksandra Vrebalov, Melinda Wagner, Weiwei Miao, Mercedes Zavala, and Ellen Taafe Zwillich;
20th century composers: Audrey Call, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Lajos Delej, Manuel de Falla, Josima Feldschuh, Edwin Geist, Pavel Haas, Paul Hindemith, György Justus, Bronislaw Kaper, Vitezslava Kapralova, Wojciech Kilar, Erich Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Arnold Schoenberg, William Grant Still, Alexandre Tansman, Ernst Toch, Sándor Vándor, Henryk Vars, Franz Waxman, Kurt Weill, Hans Winterberg and Alexander Zemlinsky;
and artistic collaborations with the Jewish Music Festival cinematograper Emma Kazaryan, digital artist Corinne Whitaker, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Zazpiak Bat Dance Group.
Formerly the Jewish Music & Poetry Project (JMPP), the ensemble rebranded in Fall 2015, with the JMPP continuing as a project of the group. The ensemble’s new name was inspired by one of E4TT’s first songs, “In dieser Zeit” (translation, “In These Times”), to a text by German/Polish poet Mascha Kaléko (1901-1976). Part of Garner’s first major work for the group, “In dieser Zeit” is on the ensemble’s 2016 CD, Surviving: Women’s Words, four major song cycles to texts by Jewish women poets, reflecting on their wartime experiences. "Surviving: Women’s Words" was made possible by grants from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and SFFCM’s Musical Grant Program. Since its first major commission using texts about the Holocaust by Polish-German/ Jewish poet Mascha Kaléko, the JMPP has focused on bringing new, nearly new, forbidden, and forgotten music to light, with a dual emphasis: 1) new music to texts by Jewish women poets or by women composers; 2) music by composers who were banned, exiled, or destroyed in the Holocaust.
Members
Margaret Halbig, piano
Nanette McGuinness, soprano
Abigail Monroe, cello
Guest Artists
Ilana Blumberg, violin
Taylor Chan, piano
Dawn Harms, violin
Chelsea Hollow, coloratura soprano
Yuchen Liu, double bass
Julie Michael, viola
Mika Nakamura, percussion
Laura Reynolds, English horn
Karen Rosenak, piano
Dagenais Smiley, violin
Solanch Sosa, violin
Dalit Hadass Warshaw, piano/composer
Tin Yi Chelsea Wong, piano
Xin Zhao, piano
Emerita Members
Anne Lerner, cello (2016-21)
Adaiha Macadam-Somer, cello (2012-15)
Kristin Pankonin, piano (2007-11)
Dale Tsang, piano (2012-20)
Staff
Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director
Brennan Stokes, Assistant Director
Abigail Monroe, Social Media Assistant
Roziht Edwards, Intern
Merve Tokar, Intern
Performance Videographer
Mister WA Productions
Advisory Council
David Garner, Senior Artistic Adviser
Elinor Armer
Kathy Barr
Jeffrey Hoover
Alden Jenks
Kurt Rohde
Bill Rudiak
Frederica von Stade
Cynthia Whitehead
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.
