E4TT Announces Monica Chew as its #MeetTheArtist Composer for June 2022

55 Taylor Street, San Francisco, CA, 94102/ E4TT.org/ (510) 684-0505

Media Contacts:
Nanette McGuinness/ nanette@E4TT.org
Brennan Stokes/ brennan@E4TT.org
Roziht Edwards/ roziht@E4TT.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 25, 20227

Ensemble for These Times

Announces the Sixth Interview in its

2022 #MeetTheArtist Interview Series

with

Month-long Spotlights on California BIPOC Women Composers:

June 2022, with Monica Chew

San Francisco, CA—San Francisco contemporary music chamber group Ensemble for These Times (E4TT) is proud to announce the continuation of the third season of its “#MeetTheArtist” interview series, which started on January 4, 2022. Each month between January and June, 2022, E4TT’s “#MeetTheArtist” interview series is spotlighting a single California BIPOC woman composer, who will be featured every Monday of their respective month with posts on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) introducing them on the series and then providing information about their website, upcoming projects, specific works we’re currently listening to, link(s) to their music channels, etc. The highlight of the month will be the full interview (audio, video, or pdf, depending on the artist’s preference) on YouTube, Instagram, and E4TT’s website on the third Monday of the month, followed by a recap to bring the artist’s month to a close.

After inaugurating the new series on January 3, 2022 with Dawn Norfleet, following with Juhi Bansal in February, Vivian Fung in March, Valerie Liu in April, and Erika Oba in May, E4TT brings the 2022 series to a close in June with Monica Chew.

Why Focus E4TT’s 2022 Interviews on BIPOC women artists?

The marginalization of diverse creators, especially BIPOC women, is an inequity that prevails throughout our
society. Women composers are in particular need of advocacy, as their work is seriously underrepresented in
mainstream classical concerts, as repeatedly shown by programming statistics. Moreover, structural racism
continues to plague the classical music field: access and advancement opportunities for BIPOC composers are
much fewer than for white composers, and, while women artists in other creative fields—even the performing
arts—have witnessed impressive advances, women composers continue to struggle to gain a foothold in classical concert halls. Further, when BIPOC and women artists do have their music performed, it is most often relegated to "their" months or time periods: Black History (February), Women's History (March), and/or Latinx/Hispanic Heritage (Sept. 15-Oct. 15), rather than integrated into regular season programming. E4TT's 2022 #MeetTheArtist Interview Series with BIPOC women composers seeks to address these problems directly, by shining a spotlight on six Bay Area and California BIPOC women composers, giving them a public forum and opportunity to gain recognition about their artistry and the issues that concern them.

“#MeetTheArtist” Interview Series

Following the Summer 2020 success of a smaller set of curated interviews focusing on women creative artists—
composer Elinor Armer, visual artist Corinne Whitaker, and soprano Chelsea Hollow—E4TT expanded its “#Meet the Artist” interview series in 2021 with month-long spotlights on individual BIPOC composers and musicians. Beginning on Monday, January 4, 2021, #MeetTheArtist featured a different BIPOC creative artist each month, with each featured every Monday of their respective month via posts on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn), first introducing the artist into the series and then featuring information about their website, upcoming projects, specific works we’re currently listening to, and/or link(s) to their music channels, etc. The highlight of the month will be the full interview (audio, video, or pdf, depending on the artist’s preference) on YouTube, Instagram,and E4TT’s website on the third Monday, followed by a recap to bring the month to the close. The 2021 series began with composer and performer Pamela Z (b. 1956) and continued in February with composer and educator Jonathan Bailey Holland (b. 1974), March with Anthony R. Green (b. 1984), April with inti figgis-vizueta (b. 1993), May with Sakari Dixon Vanderveer, June with Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1978), July with Shannon Sea, August with Marcus Norris (b. 1991), September with Brice Smith, October with Nicolas Lell Benavides (b.1987), November with Angélica Negrón (b. 1981) and December with Darian Donovan Thomas (b.1993).

E4TT began its third #MeetTheArtist series on January 3, 2022 with Dawn Norfleet. The 2022 series has run for the first six months of the year with Juhi Bansal, Vivian Fung, Valerie Liu, Erika Oba, and Monica Chew and will then be converted into a podcast, For Good Measure, launching officially on June 6, 2022.

#MeetTheArtist in June: Monica Chew

The American pianist and software engineer, Monica Chew, studied at NCSSM in Durham, North Carolina. She
obtained a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science & Mathematics, as well as a Bachelor of Music degree from
the University of North Carolina (UNC) in 1997. She went on to earn her Masters of Music degree in Piano
Performance from San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1998, and her PhD in Computer Science from UC
Berkeley in 2004. Her primary teachers include Paul Hersh, John Salmon, and Constance Kotis; Monica also has
worked as Staff Software Engineer at Google in Mountain View, California, and as Principal Software Engineer at
Mozilla in Mountain View, California.

About Ensemble for These Times

Founded in 2007, 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, with women artists an ongoing focus. 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.

Winners of The American Prize in 2021 for Chamber Music Performance, E4TT consists of award-winning soprano and Artistic Executive Director Nanette McGuinness, cellist Abigail Monroe, pianist Margaret Halbig, and Senior Artistic Advisor and San Francisco Conservatory of Music faculty member, composer David Garner. E4TT made its international debut in Berlin in 2012; was sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Budapest for a four-city tour of Hungary in 2014; and performed at the Krakow Culture Festival in 2016 and at the Conservatorio Teresa Berganza in Madrid in 2017. E4TT has performed locally at the German Consulate General, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Old First Concerts, JCC Peninsula, Trinity Chamber Concerts, and Noontime Concerts, among other venues. E4TT’s critically acclaimed recordings include “Once/Memory/Night: Paul Celan,” which was released in 2020 in honor of the centennial of this seminal 20th century poet, and won a Silver Medal in the Global Music Awards. The group’s debut CD, “Surviving: Women’s Words,” released on the Centaur label in 2016, was also honored with a Silver Medal in the Global Music Awards. E4TT’s second CD, “The Hungarians: From Rózsa to Justus” (Centaur Records, 2018) won a Gold Medal in the Global Music Awards the year of its release. The group’s fourth CD, “The Guernica Project,” will be released on Centaur Records on June 17, 2022.

For more information about E4TT’s 2021/22 Bay Area Home Season, please visit our website.

E4TT’s 2022 #MeetTheArtist series is supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov and subscribe to the California ArtBeat newsletter.

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