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Press Releases

Ensemble for These (Summer) Times: #4 (Re)Imagine 2020/21

August 19, 2020 | By Nanette McGuinness
Artistic Executive Director

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 19, 2020

Ensemble for These Times

 

Proudly announces

 

Ensemble for These (Summer) Times: Summertime 2020 Listening Series

 

#4: (Re)Imagine 2020/21: Announcing E4TT’s New Season

 

Free and Online Tuesday, August 25-September 8, 2020

 

(calendar listing below)

San Francisco — Contemporary chamber group Ensemble for These Times proudly announces the fourth and final program in “Ensemble for These (Summer) Times,” E4TT’s summertime listening series of free biweekly, topical online concerts of relevant new music from the group’s performance archives: “#4: (Re)Imagine 2020/21: Announcing E4TT’s New Season.”

The final program in E4TT’s summer listening series features nine composers from our upcoming home 2020/21 season, which E4TT is announcing this week: Elinor Armer, Vivian Fung, Juliana Hall, Emily Doolittle, Jessica Rudman, David Garner, Alden Jenks, Miklós Rózsa, and Erich Korngold.  Home season dates will be Nov. 20: Old Becomes New; Jan. 30: Anemones: Music by Women Composers; April 17: The Cassandra Project; June 12: Émigrés & Exiles in Hollywood, Series Finale. To meet the particular challenges of these times for both artists and audiences, all performances will be live-streamed free for virtual participation, and live performances will be presented in strict alignment with local and statewide public health directives. 

Starting August 25, the video for “(Re)Imagine: Announcing E4TT’s New Season” will be at https://youtu.be/A_LvkEAYkyM, with the program notes at http://www.E4TT.org/summer4.pdf. The paired interview is with beloved Bay Area composer, Elinor Armer, whose 2020 commission for the group, “Matrix” will be reprised in 2020/21 (after being premiered at the very end of the COVID-foreshortened season): https://youtu.be/Eh9TFQn22ik.

 

ABOUT ENSEMBLE FOR THESE (SUMMER) TIMES

 

Starting July 14 and continuing through July and August, E4TT is offering “Ensemble for These (Summer) Times,” the group’s summertime listening series of biweekly, topical programs with relevant new music from E4TT’s extensive recording archives.  The focus of each program has been a different subject and most were paired with an interview with a creative artist who has collaborated with E4TT. The link to each program expires when the next program goes live.  The series has consisted of:  #1 Roots & Recordings; #2 Giving Voice to the Voiceless; #3 Seeing Is Hearing; and now #4 (Re)Imagine: Announcing E4TT’s New Season, with paired interviews with guest soprano Chelsea Hollow, digital artist Corinne Whitaker, and composer Elinor Armer.

 

Ensemble for These (Summer) Times #4: (Re)Imagine 2020/21: Announcing E4TT’s New Season

 

The final program in E4TT’s summer listening series features nine composers from our upcoming home 2020/21 season, which E4TT is announcing this week: Elinor Armer, Vivian Fung, Juliana Hall, Emily Doolittle, Jessica Rudman, Elinor Armer, David Garner, Alden Jenks, Miklós Rózsa, and Erich Korngold.   Home season dates will be Nov. 20: Old Becomes New; Jan. 30: Anemones: Music by Women Composers; April 17: The Cassandra Project; June 12: Émigrés & Exiles in Hollywood, Series Finale.

 “(Re)Imagine: Announcing E4TT’s New Season” features: “Matrix” (2020) for soprano and piano, by beloved Bay Area composer Elinor Armer (b. 1939), set to texts by two other Bay Area icons, Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018) and Rella Lossy (1944-1996); “here’s a little mouse)and” from Lovestars for soprano, cello, and piano, by 1989 Guggenheim Fellow, Call for Scores composer Juliana Hall (b. 1958) to a poem by e.e. cummings (1894-1962); “Keeping Time” (2011)  for solo piano 2012 Guggenheim Fellow Vivian Fung (b. 1975); “minute etudes” (2002) for solo piano by Canadian Call for Scores composer Emily Doolittle  (b. 1975); Desde el umbral de un Sueño for soprano and piano from El alma y la memoria (1995), to texts by Antonio Machado (1875-1939), by E4TT co-founder and Artistic Advisor David Garner (b. 1954);  an excerpt from “Times of Speaking and Silence” (2006) for piano trio, by Call for Scores composer Jessica Rudman (b. 1982); the first movement of Duo, Op. 8 (1931) for cello and piano by Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995); an excerpt from “Unrestful Sleep” (2011) for solo piano by retired SF Conservatory of Music professor Alden Jenks (b. 1940); and Tanzlied des Pierrot, arr. for cello and piano, by Erich Korngold (b. 1897-1957), from his 1919 opera, Die Tode Stadt.

 

 The program links are: https://youtu.be/A_LvkEAYkyM; program notes, http://www.E4TT.org/summer4.pdf and interview: https://youtu.be/Eh9TFQn22ik.

 

                                   

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Violinist ILANA BLUMBERG has appeared across the United States and internationally, in solo appearances with the San Francisco Symphony, the Albany Symphony (NY), Symphony Napa Valley, and the Merced Symphony, as well as performances at the prestigious Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Marlboro Music Festival, the La Jolla Summerfest as a 'Rising Star', the Aspen Music Festival, and many others. She appears frequently throughout the Bay Area with the Marin, Silicon Valley, West Edge Opera, Berkeley, and California Symphonies, as well as with the Golden Gate String Quartet, eco ensemble, and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble.

 

Cellist ANNE LERNER completed her B.A. in Music at Northwestern University as a Cello Performance major after three years as a Spanish Literature major at Bryn Mawr College, earning an M.M. in cello performance at the San Francisco Conservatory. She has performed with numerous Bay Area orchestras and is a much sought-after chamber musician and performer of contemporary music. A dedicated educator, Anne conducts two youth orchestras in the Marin Symphony Youth Program, is on the faculties of Dominican University and San Rafael High School and maintains a large private studio.

 

Soprano and E4TT co-founder and Artistic Executive Director NANETTE MCGUINNESS has performed in 12 languages on two continents in over 25 roles with the Silesian State Opera (Czech Republic), Opera San Jose (Opera in the Schools), and West Bay, Pacific Repertory, Trinity Lyric, and Livermore Valley Operas, 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. Her CD of music by women composers, “Fabulous Femmes” (Centaur CRC 2461) was called “perfect for the song recital lover” by Chamber Music Magazine and features several premiere recordings.

 

KAREN ROSENAK recently retired from fulltime teaching at UC Berkeley where she taught musicianship from 1990 until 2014. She also maintained a career as pianist and founding member with the Bay Area new music ensembles Earplay and Empyrean, and performed for a number of years with other new (and “old”) music groups, including recently for Left Coast Chamber Ensemble’s premiere of Kurt Rohde’s opera, Never was a knight. . . at Z Space in San Francisco, with West Edge Opera’s Snapshot performances in 2017 and 2018, and on fortepiano with the New Esterhazy String Quartet. She currently serves part time as coordinator of piano instruction at UC Berkeley.

 

  Pianist DALE TSANG earned her BM in piano performance from the University of Southern California, her MM from the University of Michigan and her DMA from Rice University. Nominated for the 1997 Van Cliburn competition, she took first prize in the 2001 Carmel Music Society Competition and was a semi-finalist in the 1999 Washington International Competition. Tsang performed at the Aspen Music Festival, the Holland Music Sessions and the Sarasota Music Festival. Tsang is a faculty member at Laney College and an active solo and chamber musician, both nationally and internationally.

 

Pianist XIN ZHAO received a B.M. from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and an M.M. in Chamber Music Performance. Zhao received the San Francisco Conservatory’s Mirina Grin Award, and the second annual Kristin Pankonin Art Song Award; she also won First Place in the Fresno Music Club Awards, receiving the Bell T. Ritchie Award. Zhao has collaborated with the Master Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra and many prominent musicians including Menahem Pressler, Richard Fleischman, Pinchas Zukerman, Jeff Nuttall, members of Miro Quartet, and JeanMichel Fonteneau. In 2016, Zhao’s piano trio, the Capitoline, won the Berkeley Piano Club’s Emerging Artist Award.

ABOUT ENSEMBLE FOR THESE TIMES

Awarded second place for Chamber Music Performance in 2018/19 by The American Prize and currently Semifinalists for the Ernest Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music, E4TT consists of award-winning soprano and Artistic Executive Nanette McGuinness,  cellist Anne Lerner, 2015 American Prize in Composition winner Artistic Advisor David Garner, and regular distinguished guest artists. The group focuses on 20th and 21st century music that is relevant, engaging, original and compelling—music that resonates with today and speaks to tomorrow, that harnesses the power of artistic beauty, intelligence, wit, lyricism, and irony to create a deep understanding of our times and the human condition. E4TT performed at the 2016 Krakow Culture Festival, was sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Budapest in 2014 for a four-city tour in Hungary, and made its international debut in Berlin. E4TT has performed locally at the German Consulate General, SF Conservatory of Music, Old First Concerts, JCC Peninsula, Trinity Chamber Concerts, and Noontime Concerts, among other venues, and has commissioned 32 works and two arrangements.

 

E4TT’s debut CD, Surviving: Women’s Words (Centaur, 2016) won a Silver Medal in the 2016 Global Awards. Lesley Mitchell-Clarke in The Whole Note wrote “Now more than ever […] 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 CD, “The Hungarians: From Rózsa to Justus” (Centaur, 2018) features a rarely heard cello duo by Hollywood movie maven (and Hungarian émigré) Miklós Rózsa (Spellbound, Ben-Hur), along with works by three others of his compatriots who perished in the Holocaust, including the premiere recording of a work by the young Lajos Delej, and an end-of-the-era waltz song with text and music by György Justus. The recording won a Gold Medal in the 2018 Global Music Awards in three categories: chamber music, ensemble, and album.  The ensemble’s third. recording, “Once/Memory/Night: Paul Celan” was released on June 30, 2020 and was chosen as the Center for New Music’s Album of the Week for July 17.  Writes curator Kurt Rohde, “The members of Ensemble For These Times are longstanding, expert champions of forgotten work by those nearly lost to history, as well as bringing up new voices who have meaningful new work to share. Their newest recording is further evidence of this mission."

 

CALENDAR LISTING

Tuesday, August 25, 2020-September 8, 2020 online

“Ensemble for These (Summer) Times #4: (Re)Imagine 2020/21: Announcing E4TT’s New Season”

 

Performers: E4TT with Ilana Blumberg, violin, and pianists Karen Rosenak and Xin Zhao

 

Repertoire: “Matrix” (2020) for soprano and piano, by beloved Bay Area composer Elinor Armer (b. 1939), with texts by Bay Area icons, Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018) and Rella Lossy (1944-1996); “here’s a little mouse)and” from Lovestars for soprano, cello, and piano, by Juliana Hall (b. 1958); “Keeping Time” (2011)  for solo piano Vivian Fung (b. 1975); “minute etudes” (2002) for solo piano by Emily Doolittle  (b. 1975); Desde el umbral de un Sueño for soprano and piano from El alma y la memoria (1995), to texts by Antonio Machado (1875-1939), by E4TT co-founder and Artistic Advisor David Garner (b. 1954);  an excerpt from “Times of Speaking and Silence” (2006) for piano trio, by Jessica Rudman (b. 1982); the first movement of Duo, Op. 8 (1931) for cello and piano by Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995); an excerpt from “Unrestful Sleep” (2011) for solo piano by Alden Jenks (b. 1940); and Tanzlied des Pierrot, arr. for cello and piano, by Erich Korngold (b. 1897-1957), from his 1919 opera, Die Tode Stadt.

 

Venue: YouTube

Link: https://youtu.be/A_LvkEAYkyM

Paired interview: https://youtu.be/Eh9TFQn22ik

Program booklet: http://www.E4TT.org/summer4.pdf

                                   

 

For more information about Ensemble for These Times, please visit the group’s website

High resolution jpgs are available for download http://www.e4tt.org/presskit.html.

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