Ensemble For These Times Reveals 2024/25 Home Season “Women In Transit”

Bay Area-based contemporary music group Ensemble for These Times has announced its 17th Home Season entitled "Women in Transit," the first in a two-year exploration of the transformational effects of women's border-crossing and liminality in "our times."

Diversity and innovation will continue to serve as hallmarks of season programming, including that of the 2024/25 opening concert, "In Motion," on November 8, 2024, at Old First Concerts in San Francisco, featuring a musical dialogue between moto perpetuo works by Benjamin Britten and York Bowen, and World Premieres by emergent composers Darian Donovan Thomas, Ursula Kwong-Brown, and Mary Bianco.

This program will be followed on January 25, 2025 by "Midnight Serenades: Music by Women and Nonbinary Composers," the sixth edition of E4TT's popular annualseries, at the Center for New Music, with works and commissioned World Premieres from E4TT's 2023 Call for Scores for Luna Composition Lab alums. Next, on February 22, the group will present E4TT's emerita pianist Dale Tsang in "Call for Scores: Solo Piano, Vol. 2," followed by the season's title program, to be presented on April 4, 2025 at the Bowes Center, E4TT's fifth multimedia collaboration with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Technology and Applied Composition Department. The program will include World Premieres by Niloufar Nourbakhsh (to a new film by Pegah Pasalar), Han Lash (composer and dancer), and Tamara McLeod. The closing concert will be on May 9, 2025 with "Mujeres Ahora," a celebration of music by contemporary Latina composers at the Community Music Center as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival. All concerts will be offered in hybrid format for both in-person and livestream attendance.

ABOUT ENSEMBLE FOR THESE TIMES

Winner of the 2021 American Prize for Chamber Music Performance, ENSEMBLE FOR THESE TIMES (E4TT) consists of award-winning soprano/Artistic Executive Director Nanette McGuinness, cellist Abigail Monroe, pianist Margaret Halbig, and co-founder/Senior Artistic Advisor/composer David Garner, who are regularly joined in performance by outstanding guest artists. E4TT made its international debut in Berlin in 2012; the group was sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Budapest for a four-city tour of Hungary in 2014, and was presented at the Krakow Culture Festival (2016 and 2022) and at the Conservatorio Teresa Berganza in Madrid (2017.) E4TT has performed throughout the Bay Area at the German Consulate, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Old First Concerts, JCC Peninsula, Trinity Chamber Concerts, and Noontime Concerts, among other venues and series. In July 2024, E4TT released its fifth album on the Centaur label, "Emigres & Exiles in Hollywood," including favorites from the group's multi-year project exploring rare chamber music and arrangements by the many talented émigré composers who fled persecution during WWII and forever changed music for film. The group's previous four 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 Rózsa to Justus" (2018), with works by Hungarian émigré Miklós Rózsa and three of his compatriots who perished in the Holocaust; and "Surviving: Women's Words," (2016), new music to poetry by women Holocaust survivors.

ABOUT E4TT'S 17th BAY AREA HOME SEASON

What is "liminality"? The word comes from the Latin līmen, meaning "threshold," but in 1964 anthropologist Victor Turner used the term to identify the three stages that make up rites of passage: separation (preliminal), transition (liminal), and incorporation (post-liminal). These rites-ceremonies or rituals marking individual milestones, such as passage into adulthood or marriage-represent the symbolic detachment by an individual from an existing point in the social structure to another. "Liminality," the middle stage, is the in-between time when a person has let go of their original status but has not yet fully reached their new status, a state of being not one thing or yet the other. In all of its richness, 'liminality' applies to the middle ground between traditional gender roles of masculinity and femininity that so many women occupy today, and also to immigrant crossings, when one leaves her homeland for a new life somewhere else, the diasporic unknown. Liminality is also in the space when a person is 'in transition,' along the spectrum from one gender to the other. In all of these cases, there is movement, from here to there, from this to that, but "liminality" is the uncertain center.

In fall of 2024, Ensemble for These Times will commence a musical exploration of these notions of transition through an exciting two-year project, "Women Crossing/Liminality," focusing on women's immigration and identity. For the group's 17th annual Home Season, E4TT will perform "Women in Transit," five concerts presented live at various Bay Area concert venues (no one turned away for lack of funds at self-presented performances), with livestreams of self presented performances offered online without a paywall. Programming for E4TT's 2024/25 season will, as in the past, be characterized by diversity and innovation, as follows:

November 8, 2024: "In Motion"

E4TT will kick off the season on November 8, 2024 at Old First Concerts in San Francisco, with "In Motion," a far-reaching musical conversation about kinesis in all of its forms, beginning with three World Premiere -"And I Made My Way, Deciphering My Fire," for piano trio by emerging Chinese-American composer Ursula Kwong-Brown (b. 1987), "ubi lux floret" by Black queer composer Darian Donovan Thomas (b.1993), and an oboe/piano duo by Mary Bianco (b. 1939)-plus moto perpetuo movements by 20th century British composers Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) and York Bowen (1884-1961)-from Cello Sonata, Op. 65 and Suite Mignonne, Op. 39, for piano, respectively-and "Synopsis #10: I Know This Room So Well" (2006-2009) for solo English horn, by Guggenheim Fellow Lisa Bielawa (b. 1968), "Ominous Machine" (2020-21) for piano trio by JUNO award-winning Chinese-Canadian composer Vivian Fung (b. 1975), "composure" (2021) for piano trio by emerging composer Sage Shurman (b. 2005), and "Majestic Bells" (2022) for solo piano by Grammy nominated Chinese-American composer Zhou Tian (b. 1981).

Guest artists will include oboist/English hornist Laura Reynolds, violinist Lylia Guion, and cellist Megan Chartier, who will join E4TT pianist Margaret Halbig. The concert will also be livestreamed on O1C's YouTube channel.

January 25, 2025: "Midnight Serenades: Music by Women and Nonbinary Composers"

E4TT's annual audience favorite-a concert of music by women and nonbinary composers-returns in its sixth iteration with a program featuring works from our two-year collaboration with Luna Composition Lab, including the World Premieres of commission works by three composers chosen from our 2023 Call for Scores to Luna Composition Lab alums-Madeline Clara Cheng (b. 2005), Lucy Chen (b. 2005) and Caleb Palka (b. 2001)-and three additional works chosen from the 2023 Call for Scores: "Prelude to the Afterlife" (2021) for piano by Olivia Bennett (b. 2002) "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" for soprano and piano by Gabriella Carrido (b. 2004), and "What I Know About Living," (2022) for soprano and piano by Devon Lee (b. 2007). Rounding out the program will be "Manhattan Serenades" (1995) for cello and piano by Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities recipient Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972); Sin vos from Juana (2019) by Opera America Discovery Grant composer Carla Lucero (b. 1964); "Twelve Chairs" (2016) for soprano and piano by National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Competition Winner Jodi Goble; and "Midnight Snack" (2019) for soprano and cello by ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award Akshaya Avril Tucker (b. 1992).

Guest coloratura soprano Chelsea Hollow will join E4TT soprano Nanette McGuinness, cellist Abigail Monroe, and pianist Margaret Halbig. The concert will be presented at the Center for New Music in San Francisco, and will also be livestreamed at no charge (donations welcome) on E4TT's YouTube channel.

February 22, 2025: "Call for Scores: Solo Piano, Vol. 2"

E4TT emerita pianist extraordinaire Dale Tsang will perform an eclectic program of works chosen from the group's second biannual solo piano Call for Scores, which took place in July 2024 and yielded approximately 110 scores by 50 composers. The first Call resulted in a program that included works by Richard Derby, Jon Grier, Arthur Gottschalk, Juliana Hall, and other outstanding composers. The winning scores for the 2025 program will be announced on August 20, 2024. The concert will be performed live at the Berkeley Piano Club and livestreamed at no charge (donations welcome and most appreciated) on E4TT's YouTube channel.

April 5, 2024: "Women in Transit"

The clear highlight of E4TT's 2022/24 season will be Women in Transit, our annual commissions concert and our fifth multimedia collaboration with the Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. This concert will also be the first presentation in our new two-year project, "Women Crossing/Liminality," an innovative exploration of women's immigration and identity. The program will feature three commissioned World Premieres-"Cavities" a new piano trio by Opera America Discovery Grant recipient, Iranian-American Niloufar Nourbakhsh (b. 1992) to a new film by Iranian American filmmaker Pegah Pasalar (b. 1992); a dance suite for piano trio and dancer focusing on the conventions of identity and gender, composed and danced by Han Lash (they/them, b. 1981); "Sappho Fragments" by Tamara McLeod (b. 1999) for speaker, cello, tape, and piano-along with ko'u inoa (2017) for solo cello by Leilehua Lanzilotti (b. 1985), "Vertical Fields" (2014) for piano trio by Emma O'Halloran (b. 1982), "A Crown for Sonia" (2008) for soprano, cello, and piano by Zhou Thian (b. 1981), and the winning score from the E4TT/TAC student composition competition with the San Francisco Conservatory's Technical and Applied Composition Department.

E4TT soprano Nanette McGuinness will be joined by guests dancer Han Lash, violinist Lylia Guion, cellist Megan Chartier, and pianist Taylor Chan. The concert is free to attend at Cha Chi Ming Recital Hall in the Bowes Center at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (RSVPs strongly recommended); it will also be livestreamed at no charge on SFCM's Vimeo channel.

May 9, 2025: "Mujeres Ahora"

E4TT will close the season with a concert celebrating works by modern Latina composers, being presented in collaboration with the San Francisco International Arts Festival. The program, titled "Mujeres Ahora" ("Women Now"), will include compositions by Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities recipient Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972); Pulitzer Prize winner Tania León (b. 1943); Opera America Discovery Grant composer Carla Lucero (b. 1964); four-time Latin Grammy winner Claudia Montero (1962-2021); Greenfield Hermitage Prize winner Angélica Negrón (b. 1981); and National Institute of Fine Arts Belles Artes Gold Medal winner Gabriela Ortiz (b. 1964).

E4TT soprano Nanette McGuinness and pianist Margaret Halbig will be joined by violinist Lylia Guion and cellist Vanessa Ruotolo on this program. The concert will be presented live at the Community Music Center in San Francisco and livestreamed via SFIAF's YouTube channel.

E4TT's 2024/25 season is supported in part by the San Francisco Arts Council and the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov. Niloufar Nourbakhsh's commission has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by the Mellon Foundation. E4TT is honored to be a fiscally sponsored affiliate of InterMusic SF, a non-profit organization dedicated to small-ensemble music in the San Francisco Bay Area.

ABOUT THE 2024/25 SEASON'S ARTISTS

Pianist and season designer TAYLOR CHAN learned the art of collaboration-in music and in life-while completing her MM in Collaborative Piano at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she is currently a staff accompanist and coach to voice students. She has also held various administrative positions at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and is proud to have expanded her skillset to include technical writing, data management, building time-saving systems, and identifying ways to optimize collaborative workflow. Her current pursuit is to codify methodologies and create course materials to support the musical andragogy of undergraduates.

Cellist MEGAN CHARTIER is "unafraid to display gutsy abandon" (South Florida Classical Review). She has performed internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral cellist. Her current positions include core cellist of the Astralis Chamber Ensemble and principal cellist of Opera San Luis Obispo. Past positions include principal cellist of the Miami Symphony and the Pacific Region International Summer Music Academy; she has also recently performed with the San Antonio Symphony, One Found Sound, Nu Deco Ensemble, and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. A semi-finalist in the 2017 PRISMA Concerto Competition, she won 1st prize in the Ann Arbor Society of Musical Arts' 2015 Young Artist Competition and the 2015 Miami Music Festival Concerto Competition, conducted by Grzegorz Nowak of the Royal Philharmonic.

Violinist LYLIA GUION has performed as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician in France and in the Bay Area. Her extensive orchestral experience includes the Orchestre Philharmonique of Radio-France (Paris) before moving to California in 1997, where she has performed with the Berkeley, Oakland, California, Marin, and Skywalker Symphony Orchestras, as well as Pacific Chamber Orchestra and Midsummer Mozart Festival. She also served as concertmaster with Livermore and Pocket Opera. An avid educator, she has taught in various music schools, coached youth orchestras, and organized community concerts. She is a Feldenkrais practitioner and currently applies this method at her private violin studio.

E4TT Pianist MARGARET HALBIG is in high demand as a collaborative artist in both the instrumental and vocal fields. She is currently associate chair of the Voice Department and principal vocal coach at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she also frequently collaborates with faculty and student singers and instrumentalists. Halbig was the pianist for Young Women's Chorus of San Francisco from 2014 through 2023, and in 2013 was appointed collaborative piano coordinator of Interlochen Arts Camp. An advocate of new and contemporary music, she is the pianist and a board member of the new music collective Ninth Planet and has also. Halbig earned her DMA from UC Santa Barbara and performance degrees from the University of Missouri, Kansas City Conservatory, and University of Evansville, Indiana.

Coloratura soprano CHELSEA HOLLOW is known for her "soaring high range" and "stage panache" and has built a reputation for premiering new works including the roles of Helen Chavez in Dolores (2023) by Nicolas Benavides and Fenghuang in Hutong (2020) by Kui Dong. Hollow "has rewritten the book on the potential of musical activism," exploring ways to make new and traditional classical music exciting to new audiences. In 2023, she released her debut album "Cycles of Resistance" with Aerocade Music, featuring 22 commissioned works chronicling examples of human resilience in Mandarin, Dutch, Turkish, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Czech, in addition to English. In recognition of this work, she was invited by the United Nations Office of Human Rights to take part in a panel discussion on Art and Activism.

Soprano and E4TT co-founder and Artistic Executive Director NANETTE MCGUINNESS has performed in 13 languages on two continents in over 25 roles with the Silesian State (Czech Republic), Opera San Jose, West Bay Opera, Pacific Repertory Opera, Trinity Lyric Opera, and Livermore Valley Opera, among others. Solo concert engagements include Mahler's Fourth Symphony, as well as Shéhérézade (Ravel), Nuits d'étés (Berlioz), Stabat Mater (Rossini), Requiem (Fauré), Gloria (Vivaldi), Lord Nelson Mass (Haydn), Vesperae Solennes (Mozart), and Handel's Messiah and Solomon. McGuinness has been featured on seven albums with Centaur and Yuggoth Records, and her CD of music by 19th and 20th century women composers, Fabulous Femmes (Centaur)-was called "perfect for the song recital lover" by Chamber Music Magazine. She earned her PhD in Music at UC Berkeley and her MM in Vocal Performance from Holy Names College.

E4TT cellist ABIGAIL MONROE has established herself as a sought-after solo performer, chamber music collaborator, and large ensemble musician throughout the U.S. She has been praised for "add[ing] a rich, resonant layer to the ensemble, enhancing the overall texture and emotional depth of the performance." (For All Events) Formerly principal cellist of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, she holds orchestra positions at West Michigan Symphony, Missouri Symphony, and Orchestra Iowa, and frequently performs with Orchestra San Antonio, Louisiana Philharmonic, Des Moines Symphony, Dubuque Symphony, Illinois Philharmonic, Ensemble Mik Nawooj, and Northwest Indiana Symphony. Recent solo engagements have included concerto performances with the Golden Gate Symphony Orchestra and the New Mexico Philharmonic.

LAURA REYNOLDS is an active chamber and orchestral performer throughout Northern California and serves as Principal Oboist with the Santa Rosa Symphony, California Symphony, and Second Oboe and English horn with Marin Symphony. A chamber music enthusiast, she is a member of the wind quintet Avenue Winds and former member of the wind trio Trois Bois and wind quintet Citywinds. Reynolds is a member of the Applied Faculty of Sonoma State University as well as of the Pre-College and Continuing Education Divisions at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she additionally works as an arts administrator.

Pianist DALE TSANG earned her Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the University of Southern California, her MM from the University of Michigan, and her DMA from Rice University. She is a faculty member at Laney College, teaches an inspiring assortment of adult students, and serves as a competition adjudicator for a number of local and statewide piano competitions. A winner of numerous competitions and an active solo and chamber musician, she frequently performs locally and in Europe and Asia. As a core member of Ensemble for These Times, she championed 20th and 21st century music and collaborated in many commissions, premieres and international performances. She continues to enthusiastically disseminate the music of living composers.

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