Ensemble For These Times Launches Second Season of 'For Good Measure'

San Francisco contemporary music chamber group Ensemble for These Times has announced the start of the second season of its podcast, "For Good Measure," an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists from underrepresented communities, with a special focus on women composers. Episodes will be released weekly on all podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify, among many others. Each podcast episode also includes a transcript to increase accessibility and is available at no cost to listeners.

"For Good Measure" is produced and hosted by soprano and E4TT Artistic Executive Director Nanette McGuinness, co-produced and engineered by composer Stephanie Neumann, and designed by composer and E4TT Assistant Director Brennan Stokes. E4TT celebrated the release of the 100th episode of the podcast on April 29, 2024.

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.

"For Good Measure": SEASON TWO

The second season of "For Good Measure" will run from June 10, 2024 through Dec. 31, 2024, with new episodes released every Monday. The season will feature interviews with six California BIPOC women and LGBTQIA composers: Nina Shekar (b. 1995), Carla Lucero (b. 1964), Zanaida Robles, Hitomi Oba, Ursula Kwong-Brown (b.1987), and Rajna Swaminathan (b.1991).

The History of "For Good Measure"

Following the 2020 success of curated interviews with 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. The series began in January 2021 with composer/performer Pamela Z (b. 1956), continued in February with composer/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 (Sea Novaa), 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), continuing in 2022 with Dawn Norfleet, Juhi Bansal (b. 1984), Vivian Fung (b. 1975), Valerie Liu, Erika Oba, and Monica Chew (b.1977).

"For Good Measure" is available at forgoodmeasure.buzzsprout.com and on all major podcast platforms. For more information about E4TT's 2021/22 Bay Area Home Season, please visit our website at e4tt.org.