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

Media Contacts:

Nanette McGuinness / nanette@E4TT.org

Renata Volchinskaya / renata@E4TT.org

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 4, 2025

 

Ensemble for These Times

 

Announces

 

“Lines, Circles Spirals”

 

Featuring

 

New Music by Karim Al-Zand, Clarice Assad, Anna Clyne, 

inti figgis-vizueta, Hannah Ishizaki, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh

In a Musical Conversation with Duo No. 1 by Bohuslav Martinu

 

Performed by

E4TT (Soprano Nanette McGuinness, Cellist Megan Chartier, and Pianist Margaret Halbig)

with Guest Violinist Maya Victoria

 

Friday, November 7, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. 

In-Person and Livestreamed at Old First Concerts in San Francisco

(Full calendar listing below)

 

San Francisco - Award-winning SF contemporary chamber music group Ensemble for These Times (E4TT) will kick off its 18th Home Season on November 7, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. at Old First Concerts in San Francisco, with “Lines, Circles, and Spirals,” a program featuring 21st century works that engage musically with shapes and geometry, by Clarice Assad, Anna Clyne, Hannah Ishizaki, Karim Al-Zand, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, and inti figgis-vizueta, in conversation with Duo No. 1 by Bohuslav Martinu for violin and cello. “Lines, Circles, and Spirals” will be performed for both an in-person and online audience and will also be livestreamed.

 

ABOUT “LINES, CIRCLES, AND SPIRALS”

E4TT’s 18th Home Season will open on November 7, 2025, at Old First Concerts in San Francisco, with “Lines, Circles, and Spirals,” a concert featuring 21st century works that engage musically with geometrical shapes, in conversation with Duo No. 1  H. 157 (1927) by Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) for violin and cello:

“Six Bagatelles” (2018) for piano trio by Barlow Prize winner, Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand (b. 1970); “Displaced Lines” (2023) for solo piano by Latin Grammy® nominee, Brazilian-American composer Clarice Assad (b. 1978); “Fits Starts” (2003) for amplified cello and tape by Grammy® nominee, British-American composer, Anna Clyne (b. 1980); “the motion between three worlds” (2020) for solo cello by inti figgis-vizueta (b. 1993); “Ammonite” (2023) for piano trio by ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award winner, Japanese-American composer Hannah Ishizaki (b. 2000); and “Cavities” (2024) for piano trio by Iranian-American composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh (b. 1992).

Guest violinist Maya Victoria will join soprano Nanette McGuinness, cellist Megan Chartier, and pianist Margaret Halbig. The concert will also be livestreamed on O1C’s YouTube channel.

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS 

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.

 

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. 

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.

 

Violinist MAYA VICTORIA (Charyyeva) began her musical education at the age of five, studying piano and violin at a specialized music school in Ashgabat where she graduated with honors and toured internationally. In 2016, she was awarded first prize in Turkmenistan’s national competition for music school graduates. Maya continued her education at the Mimar Sinan University State Conservatory in Istanbul, where she performed with Camerata Saygun and took part in numerous concerts, festivals, and competitions as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Turkey. She completed her bachelor’s degree with honors in 2021. Now based in California, Maya is an active member of MTAC, teaches violin and piano, and regularly performs as a soloist and with various ensembles, including the Pacific Chamber Orchestra.

 

 

ABOUT ENSEMBLE FOR THESE TIMES

Winner of The American Prize in 2021 for Chamber Music Performance, ENSEMBLE FOR THESE TIMES (E4TT) consists of award-winning soprano/Artistic Executive Director Nanette McGuinness, cellist Megan Chartier, pianist Margaret Halbig, and co-founder/Senior Artistic Advisor 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 2022, and at the Conservatorio Teresa Berganza in Madrid in 2017. In California, E4TT has performed at the Paderewski Festival, the LAMOTH, UCLA, and in the Bay Area 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 five albums have all medaled in the Global Music Awards: “Emigres & Exiles in Hollywood” (2024) featuring music by some of the talented émigré composers who fled persecution during WWII for Hollywood, changing movie music as we know it; “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. The group recorded its sixth album, of music by Latine composers, in summer 2025 and launched the second season of its podcast of conversations with underrepresented creatives, “For Good Measure,” in 2024.

 

CALENDAR LISTING

 

Friday, November 7, 2025 at 8:00 p.m., San Francisco

“Lines, Circles, and Spirals”

Artists: E4TT (soprano Nanette McGuinness, cellist Megan Chartier, and pianist Margaret Halbig) with guest violinist Maya Victoria

Repertoire: “Six Bagatelles” (2018) for piano trio by Karim Al-Zand (b. 1970); "Displaced Lines” (2023) for solo piano by Clarice Assad (b. 1978); “Fits Starts” (2003) for amplified cello and tape by Anna Clyne (b. 1980); “the motion between three worlds” (2020) for solo cello by inti figgis-vizueta (b. 1993); “Ammonite” (2023) for piano trio by Hannah Ishizaki (b. 2000); Duo No. 1, H. 157 (1927) for violin and cello by Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959); “Cavities” (2024) for piano trio by Niloufar Nourbakhsh (b. 1992) 

Venue: Old First Concerts, 1751 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, and livestreamed on O1C’s YouTube channel

Tickets: $30/$25/$10 (in-person); $20 (suggested donation for livestream)

Purchase tickets: https://www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performance/ensemble-for-these-times-lines-circles-spirals-friday-november-7-at-8-pm/ or http://bit.ly/47Y11Cj

More info: https://E4TT.org/lines.html

 

For more information about E4TT’s 2025/26 Bay Area Home Season, please visit our website.

High resolution jpgs are available for download https://E4tt.org/presskit.html.

 

For more information about E4TT’s latest recording, “Emigres & Exiles in Hollywood,” please visit https://E4TT.org/emigresEPK.html or contact Max Horowitz 347.267.9563 / maxcrossover@gmail.com

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