FGM Turns 200! with Abigail Monroe - Part 2

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 207: FGM Turns 200! with Abigail Monroe - Part 2

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In this week's episode, we continue FGM Turns 200!, a mini-series where we talk to Ensemble for These Times' members and past guest artists. Today, we continue our conversation with E4TT’s guest cellist Abigail Monroe, who we spoke to in May 2025. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Abigail Monroe, check her out here: https://www.e4tt.org/abigail_monroe.html.

This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, SF Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/19151347

Co-Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-Producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Christy Xu

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Abby Monroe. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

Nanette McGuinness  00:28

Well, and then, what really drew you away from San Francisco was the Civic Orchestra.

Abigail Monroe  00:33

Yeah, yeah. Well, I should say, what I, what I there was a pandemic in 2020, which is when I finished my my bachelor's degree, and like, up and up until that point, I was like, I'm going to be done with school. I'm getting gigs and events and opportunities in San Francisco. I'm I'm going to be good. Just finishing up living here, it'll be fine. And then there's a pandemic, and I up until that point like it would take the world ending for me to feel like I ever wanted to go back to school, and then the world kind of ended a little bit. So I decided to go back and do my diploma, and at at that time, I been asked to sub for a couple of concerts with E4TT, which was really, really great, and it was nice to do. And I remember we did some recording sessions. Those were the first, like two concerts that I had technically sub for. Were these cool recording projects, yeah, live streams, which, like, no one else was a lot of people were doing, but, like, these were like, productions, you know, I remember the Cassandra Project with the projections, and you had, like, the makeup and the costume on...

Nanette McGuinness  01:48

That's right, that was a big thing.

Abigail Monroe  01:50

Yeah, it was a lot, a lot more of a production than just, like, let me turn on my camera, on, on my computer and play some, play some Bach suites, and...

Nanette McGuinness  01:58

[laughs]

Abigail Monroe  01:58

...put up my put up my Venmo code and see if anybody will will send me some money.

Nanette McGuinness  02:04

Yeah.

Abigail Monroe  02:04

Yeah. Yeah, but I think that at a certain point, when I was doing my my bachelor's degree, I realized that playing an orchestra was, I mean, I, I didn't really have a strong preference for one particular thing, like I was playing a lot of new music. I remember, like a lot of what I was doing was working with composers that I was in school with, like playing music by students and local composers and chamber music every once in a while, but I always felt compelled to to play in orchestra. That was the thing that stood out to me the most. And so when I had finished school, that was kind of the one thing that was missing, I think, from the freelance lifestyle that I had sort of built in in San Francisco, I wasn't really doing any orchestra playing, and I missed out on that. And I was about to finish my diploma in 2021 I had just kind of on a whim, sent in a recording to this Training Orchestra program, and I didn't really expect much of it. I had been, like, set on, I'm gonna stay here freelance Bay Area, that's it. And then the point that I was finishing my diploma, I had already been asked to join E for TT, like, as the cellist, right? And I was really excited about that, because it was the first like position that I was getting. Like, I could when people ask, where do you play? What group do you play with? Like that, that could be my answer. That was, it was nice to have an answer and say, like, Oh, I'm in this group, not just like, oh, you know, I'm here and there and I weddings and events. Like, I had an answer. And it was the day that we took the publicity photos, like we went to Alameda and took the the group shots, and like, that day I went back into San Francisco and I checked my email, and I had, like, a an accept acceptance for the orchestra. Was like, I don't know what to do, because we had just taken all of these photos. Like it was, I think it's already been announced that I was in the group. I was like, I really want to play an orchestra. I really want to do this. And like the it was a really cool opportunity, like, I was going to be playing in the Symphony Hall in Chicago, and it's just hard to turn that down, so that we worked it out and was able to do both. And I was kind of really like, truly, back and forth, 50/50, in that first year that I was in Chicago.

Nanette McGuinness  04:57

Yeah, first year or two, in fact.

Abigail Monroe  04:59

Yeah, it was...

Nanette McGuinness  05:00

You were back and forth a lot. It just... towards the end was when you were there more. No, you were really very professional and transparent and... brought it up really fast and said, you know, that you were committed to us, what should you do? What should we do? What, you know? So you were great.

Abigail Monroe  05:17

Good.

Nanette McGuinness  05:17

And we were able to work it out.

Abigail Monroe  05:19

Yeah, I'm so grateful that... that we were because...

Nanette McGuinness  05:22

[laughing]

Abigail Monroe  05:23

You know, really excited I had these two very different opportunities to play with these groups. Like, it's really like apples and oranges trying to decide on which one to... one to pick. [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  05:37

Yeah, well, but you really wanted to be an orchestral player, so that was the place to follow your heart. So I'm glad we were able to work it out. [laughs]

Abigail Monroe  05:44

Yeah, thank you. [laughs] Thank you. It's very, very appreciated, even still, you know.

Nanette McGuinness  05:49

Yeah, no, we... we enjoyed playing with you. But this actually leads to the next question, which is, tell us about playing with E4TT, about the music with E4TT, anything. You know, anything sticks out or you want to talk about.

Abigail Monroe  06:03

It's been a great opportunity to play music that I would have never, never played in any context. Otherwise, my life is a lot of orchestra, like big symphonic works. Every once in a while, I get to play chamber music and but it's not every, every day that I get to play music by underrepresented composers. Or there's even a good amount of music that I played with E4TT for Solo Cello that I would have never known about. Like, I think, oh gosh, the first concert where it was actually the cellist, and it was like a live performance, and it was in San Francisco, and you'd given me the program maybe four months before, something like that. And there was the Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's Lamentations.

Nanette McGuinness  06:58

Yep.

Abigail Monroe  06:59

And I...

Nanette McGuinness  07:00

Big piece.

Abigail Monroe  07:00

Yeah, it, it was such a difficult piece to learn. And I remember at that point I got the program and I had maybe, like one cello lesson left in school, like one one lesson, and then I was just on my own after that, and it was the first piece of music in my my career, I guess, or my life, really that I I wasn't. I didn't have a teacher there every week to give me suggestions. I showed it to Jennifer one time. I was like, this is this is what I've got. This is my first piece out in the real world. And she's like, "Good luck." [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  07:41

[laughing] It is a major, major piece. I mean...

Abigail Monroe  07:45

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  07:45

As I recall, Brennan suggested that you would do a great job and that I should offer to you, and I showed it to you, and you're like, "Yeah, sure!"

Abigail Monroe  07:51

Yeah, yeah, it was, it was a doozy. And I I'm so glad I got to play it, because now I can bring it out for other, other performances, but at the time, it was like it was a beast. And I remember that summer, I had just moved into a new apartment in San Francisco. It was before I knew I was moving out of town, and so my one of my best friends and I, who had lived together for several years, she and I had moved into a new apartment, and she was used to hearing me practice for because we lived together, like, since Interlaken basically, like in high school, and we had moved in with this girl who is, you know, she's she had a day job. She worked like a nine to five, and we told her, like, I'm a classical musician. I play the cello. I have to practice at home during the day. I know you work from home sometimes. Is that going to be okay? And she's like, oh, yeah, of course. I love the cello. That sounds great. And...

Nanette McGuinness  08:48

Little did she know? [laughing]

Abigail Monroe  08:49

Yeah. And I was like, that's great. And every day I was like, scraping through this piece [laughs] in my room, trying to... trying to learn it, and then, like, on top of that, a lot of the music that we played a lot of extended techniques for the cello, so like literal scraping sometimes, and every day, I was like, I hope this is...

Nanette McGuinness  09:10

[laughs]

Abigail Monroe  09:10

...this is what you thought you... realized you signed up for. And she was kind of like, "Okay... but this concert's when?" [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  09:19

[laughing] It wasn't like a Bach Air on the G Sting you know.

Abigail Monroe  09:21

Exactly. Yeah, that's kind of, I think that's what she was expecting. But yeah, it was. I had a great time playing with E4TT, like I said, it was a lot of music that I wouldn't encounter otherwise, in any other facet of playing anywhere.

Nanette McGuinness  09:38

Yeah.

Abigail Monroe  09:39

That's the... it's the piece that really stood out to me. And of course, it was, like, the first piece that I was playing as a member of the group, so I was like, I really need to do a good job on this. So I...

Nanette McGuinness  09:51

[laughs]

Abigail Monroe  09:51

I was practicing it every day, and it was the first piece that I couldn't just, like, take to a teacher every week and ask for advice on so it...

Nanette McGuinness  09:58

Right.

Abigail Monroe  09:59

Was especially like, I gotta work through this. [laughs] Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  10:04

Yeah, it's funny. Instrumentalists, often, once they're done, they don't, they don't continue, you know, once they're done with school, they don't keep taking lessons. Singers, because our instruments inside us, we keep taking lessons, we keep coaching. You know, maybe we do less as we're professional, or as we're touring, but somehow it doesn't seem to be accepted in the same way for instrumentalists, you know, they're supposed to be fully formed, and off they go.

Abigail Monroe  10:30

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  10:30

Which is probably scary.

Abigail Monroe  10:32

It is... It is a little bit scary, I mean, and it's, I think, at a certain point, hard, harder to find people to go to who are, like, so much further on in their career than you, especially if you don't live in a place with like a major conservatory or major orchestra, to find people who's they're just so much more experienced than than you, you can go to and say, I could really use a mentor for this. A lot of the times, it's just like friends that you you have, or colleagues, people that are kind of nebulously in the same place as you, trying to figure it out, trying to freelance or get it get a job. So it's...

Nanette McGuinness  11:14

Right.

Abigail Monroe  11:14

Yeah, harder to find mentors as you develop.

Nanette McGuinness  11:20

Yeah.

Abigail Monroe  11:20

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  11:23

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Abby Monroe, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.E4TT.org. This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to Co-producer and Audio Engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]