With support from the California Arts Council, Ensemble for These Times will create, “UPLIFT II: The California BIPOC Women Composers and Podcast Project,” which will include the commission and premiere of two new works in 2024; an educational outreach program for young musicians of color; and a new season of E4TT’s podcast interview series, “For Good Measure,” focusing on six California BIPOC women composers, all conducted in order to uplift and elevate the local classical music field by bringing increased recognition to BIPOC women creative artists in California.
Winners of The American Prize in 2021 in Chamber Music Performance, Ensemble for These Times (E4TT) is a contemporary chamber music group currently celebrating its eighteenth season. E4TT performs 4-6 hybrid concerts each season in the San Francisco Bay Area at various venues for an enthusiastic and growing audience; 1-2 of these concerts are offered free-of-charge to all attendees and ticket prices are kept deliberately low for the remaining concerts, with deeply discounted prices for students and the elderly, and a policy of no one turned away from attending self-presented concerts due to a lack of ability to pay. All self-presented concerts continue to be available online at no charge to viewers and are archived on YouTube for later viewing at no cost to all. The group regularly commissions new work for premiere on their annual season, and is committed to performing the works of women, people of color, members of the LGBTQIA community and by those historically oppressed or forgotten. In 2020, the group began an interview series focusing on women creative artists; the second season of the series in 2021 focused on BIPOC composers and musicians, and a third season, which started in January 2022, focused on California BIPOC women composers. The group began a podcast version of the interview series, entitled “For Good Measure,” in June 2022, which is continuing. The group also began a pilot outreach program, “Uplift,” in 2022/23. Ensemble for These Times also tours regularly, with previous engagements in New York, Boston, Southern California, Madrid, Krakow, Berlin, and Hungary, and has released five award-winning CDs, with the ensemble’s sixth recording to be released in May 2026.

