E4TT Announces 2026/27 Season Plans

I see that it was almost exactly one year ago when I wrote about Ensemble for These Times’ (E4TT) plans for the 2025/26 season. Yesterday’s electronic mail brought me the announcement of the 2026/27 season. This will be the nineteenth Home Season, and it will launch a two-year initiative entitled The HOME Project, which will explore (in E4TT’s own words) “the meaning of home.”

The E4TT home page has now been updated with hyperlinks for the five concerts to be presented. Each of those Web pages provides a summary of the works to be performed, as well as hyperlinks for ticket purchases. All of the performances will also be live-streamed. Each of the programs in San Francisco has its own Web page including a hyperlink to the date-and-time summary as follows:

Sunday, October 18, 3:00 p.m., Community Music Center, Call for Scores: Solo Piano, Vol. 3: Thirteen composers were selected. Pianist Dale Tsang will perform their contributions as follows:

1. Jinjoo Choi: "Cogwork Rhapsody"
2. Gilad Cohen: "Pulse"
3. Michael Coleman: Seville Rag
4. Andrew Davis: "Album Leaves - III. Pulse Train"
5. Xinyuan Deng: "Autumn Landscape"
6. Isaiah Diaz-Lopez:"Magenta - The First to Dream
7. Arturo Fernandez: "Pedro's Come Home Suite - Conga en forma di Corrente"
8. Matthew Lam: "Fragments of Rain"
9. Joao Oliveira: "ff - I. Frozen Fred"
10. Luca Pasquini: "Dispositions - 1. Leggiero, flickering"
11. Josh Rodriguez: "LUZ ENTRE AGUAS - II. Estancia"
12. Louis Rosen: "ACT ONE SUITE - 1. Opening - The City" and "3. Traveling Music"
13. Brady Wolff: "Evoke Stardust"

For those that do not yet know, the venue is located in the Mission at 544 Capp Street. Tickets may be purchased for $30, $15, and $5. A Web page has been created for both tickets and livestream connection.

Poster design for the November concert (from its E4TT Web page)

Sunday, November 15, 4:00 p.m., Old First Concerts, Exile | Banishment | Home: The program will begin with selections for soprano and mezzo from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 79, From Jewish Folk Poetry. Vocalists will be sopranos Nanette McGuinness and Carina Kahane and mezzo Melinda Martinez Becker. There will also be two world premiere performances: a duo for cello and piano by Mary Bianco and “Skazka,” composed for narrator and piano ensemble by Alex Malinas. The second half of the program will begin with the cello solo “Armadura,” composed by Andrea Casarubbios. This will be followed by two further vocal compositions: David Garner’s “Unter dayne vayse Shtem” for soprano and piano and “Stories of My Mother,” composed by Stella G. Gitelman Willoughby for mezzo and piano. This is another familiar venue, located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. Tickets will be available for purchase through an Old First Concerts Web page.

Friday, April 9, 7:30 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), HOME: This will be E4TT’s seventh multimedia collaboration with the Conservatory. There will be four world premiere performances. One of them will present the winner of the E4TT/SFCM Composition Department multimedia student composition competition. The other three will be recent works commissioned by emerging composers Max Marcus, Max Tafoya, and Zoe Yost. Clarice Assad will contribute one of her works to the second half of the program, which will also see a visual montage for a setting of four “responses” to "America the Beautiful,” composed, respectively, by Tyson Gholston Davis, Reena Esmail, Jake Heggie, and Juri Seo. The specific SFCM venue has not yet been announced.

Saturday, May 15, 7:30 p.m., Center for New Music, Inspiración: Music by Women and Nonbinary Composers: The program will feature three works commissioned by Luna@10, marking the tenth anniversary of the Luna Composition Lab. Those works will be a piano trio by Ilaria Hawley, a string duo by Peyton Neleson, and a piano trio by Ebún Ogúntola. The remainder of the program will be devoted to chamber music by more familiar composers: Chen Yi, Gabriela Lena Frank, Edna Alejandra Longoria, Ann Thorvaldsdottir, and Gabriela Mari Esabel Valverde. Most readers probably know by now that the venue is located at 55 Taylor Street, just north of Market Street.