Founded in 2007, the Jewish Music & Poetry Project has a mission of bringing new, nearly new, forbidden and forgotten music to light. We rebranded as Ensemble for These Times in 2015, with the JMPP continuing as a major group project. Concert and tour info for the JMPP from Fall 2015 forward have been integrated into E4TT's website and can be seen in E4TT's concert calendar; earlier archival concert info will be added to the E4TT past calendar soon.
E4TT's fifth release, "Emigres & Exiles in Hollywood," (Centaur CRC 4111) won a Silver Medal in the 2024 Global Music Awards and is available for streaming
at iTunes, YouTubeMusic, Amazon.com, Deezer,
Spotify, Tidal or Quobuz. It features music by eight emigre composers who who fled persecution during WWII for Los Angeles, going on to be instrumental in founding today's renowned Hollywood sound, shaping the music of generations of American composers, and is part of the group's Jewish Music & Poetry Project. Download the booklet here.
"The ensemble expresses an emotive power well suited to the band book being addressed. Historically adroit and culturally sensitive, the music in Emigres & Exiles in Hollywood is as compelling now in its vindication as it was revolutionary in its infancy." (C. Michael Bailey at WildMercuryRhythm.com)
E4TT's third release, "Once/Memory/Night: Paul Celan", won a Silver Medal in the 2020 Global Music Awards and is available for streaming or downloading
at iTunes, YouTubeMusic, Amazon.com, Deezer,
or Spotify, or you can purchase a CD from E4TT. It honors the centennial of Paul Celan (1920-1970) whose work speaks to his experiences under a brutal regime, via premiere recordings by David Garner, Jared Redmond, Libby Larsen, and Stephen Eddins, plus Anthony Milosz reading his father's poem, and is part of the group's Jewish Music & Poetry Project. Download the booklet here or view it as a flipbook.
"Elliptical, rhythmically spellbinding, each word obdurate and as inward as a geode, Celan's poems embody a conviction that the truth of what has been broken and torn must be told with a jagged grace. And few, if any, recordings of his work tell their truth better than Once/Memory/Night: Paul Celan by Ensemble for These Times. This recording features almost an hour of poetry echoing with heart-aching emotion delivered in a kind of near-spiritual quietude... The Ensemble's performance is both poised and haunting, and is raised to a rarefied realm by lustrous and soaring, songful recitatives executed by the inimitable Nanette McGuinness, More of the transcendent beauty of Celan's work unfolds in Jared Redmond's Nachtlang before we are treated to the extraordinary recitation of another celebrated poet, Czeslaw Milosz's A Song on the End of the World by Milosz's son Anthony, followed by the disc's denouement: a rapturous performance of Milosz's poem which unfolds with poise and sensual fluidity from the lips of the magnificent McGuinness." (Raul da Gama at The Whole Note)
E4TT's second release, "The Hungarians: From Rozsa to Justus" (Centaur CRC 3660), won a Gold Medal in the 2018 Global Music Awards and is available for streaming or downloading at iTunes, YouTube Music or Amazon.com. It consists of music by four Hungarian composers killed or exiled in the Holocaust, Miklos Rozsa, Sandor Vandor, Lajos Delej, and Gyorgy Justus, and is part of the group's Jewish Music & Poetry Project. Download the booklet here.
"Lerner-Wright and Tsang knew how to tap into the rhetorical side of Rosza's Opus 8 duo, making it clear that there was more to the music than the composer's skill in reflecting Hungarian idioms." (Stephen Smoliar at The Rehearsal Studio)
E4TT's debut CD, "Surviving: Women's Words" (Centaur CRC 3490), won a Silver Medal in the 2016 Global Music Awards and is available at Amazon,HB Direct, or Arkiv Music or or directly from E4TT. It consists of song cycles written for E4TT for soprano and piano and soprano, cello, and piano by David Garner to poems by four women Holocaust survivors, Mascha Kaleko, Rose Auslaender, Else Lasker-Schueler and Yala Korwin and is part of the group's Jewish Music & Poetry Project.
"With the release of this deeply moving and well-conceived project, the San Francisco-based Ensemble for These Times (E4TT) has put forth a superb and relevant spoken word and musical recording...Now more than ever, as the U.S. experiences a deja vu of hatred and is poised on the brink of societal unravelling, the potent and timeless messages of survival, love, tolerance and forgiveness contained on this brilliant presentation need to resonate throughout the world." (Lesley Mitchell-Clarke at The Whole Note)