Tuesday, August 22, 2023

E4TT Announces 2023/24 Season Plans

The sixteenth season of Ensemble for These Times (E4TT) will be as abbreviated as it was last season. Once again, only three of the scheduled events will take place within the San Francisco city limits. The core members of the group are still soprano and Artistic Executive Director Nanette McGuinness, cellist Abigail Monroe, pianist Margaret Halbig, and composer and Senior Artistic Advisor David Garner, whose is also a member of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) Faculty. There will also be guest performers, one of whom, Megan Chartier, will be filling in for Monroe for the first concert of the season.

Each of the programs has its own Web page on the E4TT Web site. Each of these pages provides a summary of the works to be performed, along with “preview” excepts. Those pages also provide the specific information and hyperlinks for ticket purchases. All the Web pages are hyperlinked to the date-and-time summary for each of the programs as follows:

Friday, September 22, 8 p.m., Transformations: Halbig, Chartier, and violinist Jennifer Redondas will play Eduard Steuermann’s piano trio arrangement of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht” (transfigured night). McGuinness will sing songs selected from Franz Schreker’s Opus 8 collection. The remainder of the program will be devoted to works by living composers. These will be Lisa Bielawa (“The Dragon and the Girl,” composed for solo cello), Darian Donovan Thomas (“Fluid” for violin and tape), and inti figgis-vizueta (a  solo piano composition entitled “a bridge between starshine and clay”).

Saturday, January 20, 7:30 p.m., Quest: Music by Women and Nonbinary Composers: Tamara MacLeod’s “Spent” will be given its world premiere performance. Other contributing composers will be Jennifer Higdon, Tania León, Jessica Mao, Claudia Montero, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Gabriella Smith, Alex Temple, and Florence Price. The program will also present the results of the Call for Scores, works by alumni of the Luna Composition Lab.

Friday, April 5, 7:30 p.m., Expression: Ism: This will be the annual commissions concert. It will reflect back on Schoenberg having begun the season with a chamber music arrangement of Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs, one of his earliest twelve-tone compositions. There will also be world premiere performances of three trios commissioned by Garner, Darian Donovan, and Valerie Liu. Finally, the winner of the Technology And Applied Composition competition at SFCM will be included on the program.

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