FGM Turns 200! with Abigail Monroe - Part 3

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 208: FGM Turns 200! with Abigail Monroe - Part 3

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

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/19151349

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

Do you have anything coming up that you'd like to share with us or that you're excited about?

Abigail Monroe  00:32

Um, yeah, well... I guess I I'm excited about a lot of things that are they're very different just because they're I mean, what I do, every project that I have, or every event or concert that I play, is so different. It's not like I do the same thing every week...

Nanette McGuinness  01:01

Yeah.

Abigail Monroe  01:02

...the next thing that's coming up for me that I know I'm doing is, like, I'm playing some chamber orchestra in Oklahoma. 

Nanette McGuinness  01:11

Nice!

Abigail Monroe  01:12

Which... yeah, which is, like, unconducted Chamber Orchestra, which will be fun. I... in the last couple of years I've gotten this position at a summer festival. So it's the Missouri Symphony, but they have, like, a big summer... summer season over the course of...

Nanette McGuinness  01:30

mmhmm

Abigail Monroe  01:31

...course of like a month, and started playing with them a couple of summers ago, and I just this is my first summer as, like, a tenured member of the orchestra. So that's, that's fun. Thank you. Yeah, so that'll be fun. I'll be there for a month. And like, you know, I have friends that play there, and they're actually, Luke is going to be playing too, for the month... Luke is my husband so he's [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  01:54

[laughs]

Abigail Monroe  01:54

...for context.

Nanette McGuinness  01:56

Thank you, yes.

Abigail Monroe  01:57

Yeah, he... he's going to be playing too. And I have more more things this summer than I expected. I'm doing a little bit of teaching for a chamber music festival in Houston for for a week, and then just some, like, various concerts and places that I've no I never expected that I would play in like, of course, if you had asked me five years ago where I thought I would be playing, it certainly wouldn't have been like Oklahoma or I have a concert in a think in Vermont later in the summer. And I'm trying to, trying trying to think of all the top of my head, like upstate New York at some point, like places that I really wouldn't have expected to play... but I get to so that's, that's kind of cool, even, like before I even, maybe even moved down here, there's a lot of things that I wouldn't have expected to do?

Nanette McGuinness  03:01

mmhmm

Abigail Monroe  03:02

Yeah, I...  It's hard to hard to see past the summer right now, just because, like, even though I don't have a position in an orchestra or anything, a lot of times I've noticed down here, people book very, like, a lot later than I'm used to, like, I have a offer for an orchestra down here for next season that part time, like for service kind of thing, but which I'm looking forward to. But...

Nanette McGuinness  03:29

mmhmm

Abigail Monroe  03:30

...it, you know, the summer, there's a lot of opportunity for a lot... of lot of things to come up.

Nanette McGuinness  03:35

Yeah!

Abigail Monroe  03:36

...and hopefully, hopefully things will but at least in the immediate future, my summer is kind of all over the place, [laughing] which is fun, because I don't want to be in Louisiana in the middle of July and August the entire time.

Nanette McGuinness  03:54

[laughs]

Abigail Monroe  03:54

I did it last year, and it was, it was tough.

Nanette McGuinness  03:58

Hot.

Abigail Monroe  03:58

Yeah, like, I moved, moved to Louisiana last May, and I was in Chicago, and it was like the perfect time to be in Chicago. The summer is beautiful, and it's the absolute worst time to be in Louisiana. So I just set myself up for the worst right there at the beginning. [laughs] So hopefully I don't have to do that.

Nanette McGuinness  04:19

Yeah, I grew up in Houston and... it's very hot and humid.

Abigail Monroe  04:24

Yeah yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  04:25

I totally get that. So yeah, it's nice you get to travel and do all sorts of interesting summer gigs, and you're a tenured summer festival player in Missouri, and then you can come back to Louisiana when things start to cool down just a wee bit.

Abigail Monroe  04:38

Yeah, hopefully, yeah. Or more likely, do what I've been doing for the last year, which is come home for like a day or two and then go to go to somewhere else around here.

Nanette McGuinness  04:51

Wow. Well, it sounds like you're having an exciting time in any case.

Abigail Monroe  04:55

Yeah, yeah, it's nice. I think the thing that I'm hoping to... to eventually have, which I've been able to try and focus on a little bit more down here, just because it's a much slower pace of life in Louisiana than like in even Chicago, running around, trying to pick up gigs and do work as I have been putting more of an effort into like preparing lists for orchestra auditions, and hopefully at some point, something will get something good, and be able to settle down a little bit more and have a job that I can go to every week in the same place, so...

Nanette McGuinness  05:40

Right.

Abigail Monroe  05:41

We'll see what happens.

Nanette McGuinness  05:42

The freelancing is fun, but for all of those folks who are going to be listening to this podcast next, sometime in the '25-'26 season, Abby would like a permanent orchestral job. So there she is. [laughs]

Abigail Monroe  06:00

Yeah, yeah. I like the unpredictability, in a way, sometimes, of freelancing, because, like I said, there's so many things that I would have never expected to do, and, of course, so many things that I I wouldn't be able to do with, just like being in the same place week after week.

Nanette McGuinness  06:21

Right.

Abigail Monroe  06:21

Same job. But you know, some... every once in a while, stability sounds really nice. [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  06:28

[laughs] Especially the older one gets too so...

Abigail Monroe  06:30

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can only there's... there's a lot of miles on my car right now... [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  06:36

[laughs]

Abigail Monroe  06:36

...traveling. So...

Nanette McGuinness  06:38

Yeah.

Abigail Monroe  06:38

...how long we could do it?

Nanette McGuinness  06:40

Right, exactly. All right, well, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this.

Abigail Monroe  06:49

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  06:49

[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]