Ensemble for These Times
Exile | Banishment | Home
Nanette McGuinness, soprano
Megan Chartier, cello
Margaret Halbig, piano
joined by Grace Wahlen, conductor
Carina Kahane, soprano
Melinda Martinez Becker, mezzo-soprano
Alex Malinas, narrator
Aria Shum, violin
Taylor Robinson, flute/piccolo
Zoe King, clarinet
Eddie Virtgaym, percussion
This concert is co-presented by KlezCalifornia
Dmitri Shostakovich From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79 (selections)
Alex Malinas Skazka World Premiere
Andrea Casarrubios Armadura
David Garner Unter dayne vayse Stern (from Vilna Poems)
Stella G. Gitelman Willoughby Stories of My Mother
Mary Bianco new work for cello and piano World Premiere
Please join us for a pre-concert talk with composers Alex Malinas and Mary Bianco at 3:30
Award-winning new music group E4TT explores this duality musically with Shostakovich’s From Jewish Folk Poetry, (selections, sung in the poetry’s original language of Yiddish), the World Premiere Skazka (a multimedia work of twisted Russian folktales reinterpreted and narrated in Russian) by Alexander Malinas, Armadura by Andrea Casarrubios (inspired by writings of Frida Kahlo), Stories of My Mother (a narrative of a woman’s escape to freedom) by Stella G. Gitelman Willoughby, Unter dayne vayse Stern by David Garner to poetry by Avrom Sutskever, and a World Premiere for cello and piano by Mary Bianco.
Winners of The American Prize for Chamber Music Performance, Ensemble for These Times focuses on underrepresented and unheard musical voices, particularly women composers. The group has performed internationally at the Krakow Culture Festival (2016 and 2022), Conservatorio Teresa Berganza in Madrid (2017), was sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Budapest (2014) and made its international debut in Berlin (2012). E4TT has released five award-winning albums, The Guernica Project, Surviving: Women’s Words, Once/Memory/Night: Paul Celan, and The Hungarians: from Rozsa to Justus, and Emigres & Exiles in Hollywood, with a sixth album, El Tiempo Latine, music by today’s Latine composers, just out on Aerocade Music in May 2026, and produces a weekly podcast of conversations with women and BIPOC creatives, “For Good Measure.”
