FGM Turns 200! with Mia Nardi-Huffman - Part 1

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 213: FGM Turns 200! with Mia Nardi-Huffman - Part 1

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 are joined by E4TT’s guest violinist Mia Nardi-Huffman, who we spoke to in May 2025. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Mia Nardi-Huffman, check her out here: https://www.mianardihuffman.com/.

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/19408161

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 are joined by guest violinist Mia Nardi-Huffman. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

Nanette McGuinness  00:27

Welcome, Mia, and thank you so much for joining us.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  00:31

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, Nanette. It's great.

Nanette McGuinness  00:34

We've really enjoyed having you play with us, and we're very much looking forward to having you join us again when we tour to the East coast.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  00:41

Yes, me too. [laughs] Can't wait. yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  00:43

So, let's get started here. Tell me about your musical path.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  00:47

Absolutely, yeah. So I was a very musical kid, very musical, like young, young child, but my parents could never afford a piano in the house and private lessons. It was just so expensive. So I did you know choir little kid things through my school and when I reached third grade my public school actually had a free strings program you could learn violin, viola, cello for free, and I remember running off of the school bus with my permission slip to play the violin, I actually don't remember why I chose the violin. I know they demonstrated all the instruments to us, but I know that I was single-mindedly focused on playing the violin, and I said, "Mom!" you know, with my permission slip, like... "I could play the violin," and she was so excited, and so that's how I got my start. I was eight, and after about a year my school teacher reached out to my parents and said, you know, I think we've got something here... [laughing]

Nanette McGuinness  01:47

[laughs] They were right.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  01:48

Yes [laughing] and very thankful for that, and they reached out to my parents, and I started private instruction, and being that I'm from the New York area, then a lot of that started being funneled into Manhattan, so even though I grew up in Connecticut, I was spending my weekends...

Nanette McGuinness  02:05

Ahh...

Mia Nardi-Huffman  02:05

...in the city. Yeah, so I did Mannes Pre-College and New York Youth Symphony, and was very lucky to study with Shirley Gibbons and with her teaching assistant, Akiko Silver, and I got my start here in New York, where I live.

Nanette McGuinness  02:19

Yeah.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  02:20

Yeah, which was wonderful, and then actually I applied only to Juilliard when I...

Nanette McGuinness  02:25

[laughs]

Mia Nardi-Huffman  02:25

I know, which was really audacious. [laughing] When I was a senior in high school, I was like, if I don't get into Juilliard, I'm taking a year off, and I'm just gonna see what happens. And spoiler alert, I didn't get in, but I actually loved taking a gap year. I got to study with Shirley Gibbons, practice. I was almost like a monk. I was working out every day, eating the same food every day, and practicing for like five or six hours a day. Wow, yeah. And at the end of that year, I got into the San Francisco Conservatory with Bettina Mussomeli, and that's ultimately where I went, and I'm very happy for that. She is an exceptional teacher, and that school was a really good fit for me. It's small, it's in a really arts-focused city. I love the Bay Area, so I ended up there, and then after four years I kept going, so I got my masters. I call people who did that at SFCM lifers, and actually, while I was doing my master's, I met Margaret Halbig, who's in Ensemble for These Times, and there was an opening for a violinist in a new music ensemble called at the time Wild Rumpus, now called Ninth Planet, and I had been playing in the new music ensemble at SFCM as a grad student, and I was recommended just to join for one concert, and I did that, and I just fell in love with everybody there, and I loved New Music, which I had never thought I would have said when I was...

Nanette McGuinness  03:11

[laughs]

Mia Nardi-Huffman  03:57

[laughing] ...you know 20 or 21 but it was perfect timing. I loved the music, loved the people. So, after I finished grad school, I went mostly in that direction of playing new music, and I formed my string quartet, the ASTRAEUS Chamber Collective, and we mostly were focusing on new music, sometimes throwing a little, you know, Beethoven or Piazzolla in the mix, but a lot of music and focusing on LGBTQ and BIPOC composers as well, and after 13 years in the Bay Area, I moved back to the East Coast, and nowadays I would say 50% of my performance time is very classically based, and the other 50% I play rock and roll. [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  04:49

[laughs]

Mia Nardi-Huffman  04:50

It's a very.. I never would have been even able to conceive of that kind of career path for myself as a kid.

Nanette McGuinness  04:56

Yeah.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  04:57

I always loved Led Zeppelin and AC. DC, and like, these, you know, rock bands...

Nanette McGuinness  05:02

Yeah.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  05:02

...and I always loved classical music and the violin, and I couldn't conceive of how those two things would ever really intertwine. But about a year and a half ago, I won an audition for a group called the Emo Orchestra, yeah, which is a direct confluence of both of those interests of mine, so I do national tours, playing with alongside rock bands, but playing on the violin with sheet music, you know, in an orchestra setting, and it's a lot of fun, so about half the time I do that, that kind of music, and then the other half of the time I'm playing mostly contemporary chamber music, but yeah, that's that's my musical path. [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  05:44

Well, that's a great path, and I have to say, on the one hand, when one thinks of a string joining rock, one thinks of cello, you know, Lincoln Park...

Mia Nardi-Huffman  05:53

Right!

Nanette McGuinness  05:53

...or whatever.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  05:54

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  05:54

Right? So, it's nice to hear that other strings can join the party. [laughs]

Mia Nardi-Huffman  05:59

[laughs] That's so true, you know, there was this band called Apocalyptica. I don't know if you ever heard of them. They were...

Nanette McGuinness  06:04

I don't think so.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  06:05

When I was in high school, they were kind of big amongst classical musicians. They did like metal covers on cello, and they wore cello on straps and everything, and I thought it was the coolest thing, but that really is the first time that I saw strings in rock and heavy rock music, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  06:21

Yeah, yeah. Well, and we needed a violinist because we don't have violin in our core ensemble.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  06:28

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  06:28

But we do a lot of work with piano trio, and more and more the group is changing into piano trio that also has a soprano, and we do mix and match, but Margaret, what she said to me, when we were needing a violinist for this particular concert, she was like, "She loves new music, she's a new music maven, she's really good at it, wait 'till..." you know, and I was like...

Mia Nardi-Huffman  06:50

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  06:50

Okay. [laughs]

Mia Nardi-Huffman  06:51

Yeah, and that's so true, you know, I grew up loving romantic era music, and I thought, you know, as a string quartet musician, that was really the path that I was going to go down, and then I just happened to do the New Music Ensemble at the Conservatory, and Nicole Paiement is the music director at the time, and first of all, great to have a conductor that's a woman...

Nanette McGuinness  07:13

Right.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  07:14

...and she's brilliant and amazing, and the music that she picked was was so fantastic, and I realized that there was this entire other world with my instrument sounds that I could have never even conceived of. I've played pieces where I use styrofoam as a bow, or I've...

Nanette McGuinness  07:31

[laughs] Wow.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  07:32

[laughing] ...just never would have thought of, and it opened up that world for me, and I've never looked back. I just love it. So, she.. I'm glad that she recommended me. [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  07:44

[laughs] We are too. But one of the interesting things about all these conversations, and you know, at this point we've had a number, is that I wouldn't say the random chance, but more kind of the universe pushing things together, and many musicians have this moment where something is thrown in their path and kachung, their life changes, and that's the direction they go, or even the instrument is thrown at them, or whatever.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  08:08

mmhmm

Nanette McGuinness  08:10

You know, I mean, in your case, clearly you don't remember why, but the violin was like, "This is me, I have to play this," and you've had a couple of those moments in your...

Mia Nardi-Huffman  08:19

mmhmm 

Nanette McGuinness  08:20

...that you just described, so it's...

Mia Nardi-Huffman  08:21

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  08:22

It's interesting.

Mia Nardi-Huffman  08:23

It is. Yeah, I feel very lucky that violin was the instrument for me. Also, because I never grew past like five feet tall, so if I had chosen [laughing} you know the viola or the cello, it would have been a disaster.

Nanette McGuinness  08:35

What if you'd chosen the double bass?

Mia Nardi-Huffman  08:37

I know. Could you imagine that? Would have just been like hopeless. So [laughing] really lucked out in many ways.

Nanette McGuinness  08:43

Or even percussion, to be honest...

Mia Nardi-Huffman  08:44

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  08:44

...because you'd be running a lot harder than anybody else that you were working with

Mia Nardi-Huffman  08:49

Very true. [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  08:50

Although, I do know short percussionists, so I know it's possible. [laughs]

Mia Nardi-Huffman  08:52

It is possible, yeah. [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  08:54

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  08:57

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Margaret Halbig, 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]