CONCERT 1 at Tempus Projects: MONODRAMA
THURSDAY, MARCH 5, at 7 pm
*denotes world premiere
Membrane of Light * (Installation) Zouning Anne Liao
Membrane of Light reimagines fermentation as feedback—a process where energy, whether microbial or digital, transforms matter into something sensorially alive. Even in its dried, post-living form, the SCOBY(Symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) continues to oscillate between growth and decay, presence and absence. Membrane of Light makes this continuity perceptible through real-time video and light-based interaction, where the organic and the technological co-compose ephemeral moments of luminosity.
Born in Guangdong, China, Zouning Liao is a composer and sound designer whose music reflects her fascination with nature, malfunctioning machines, distorted noises, and the interplay between refined and raw timbres. Driven by a curiosity about the expressive potential of electronic circuits, she is passionate about DIY electronics, building her own sensor instruments to explore new sonic possibilities shaped by physical gestures. Her compositions have been showcased across the United States, Europe, and China. In 2025 her works have been featured in festivals and conferences such as Sonic Pavilion Festival, IRCAM ManiFeste, ICMC, Digital Dialogue workshop at the IMPULS Academy, and SPLICE Festival. Now based in Chicago, Zouning is in her second year of a PhD program in Music Composition and Technology at Northwestern University. Outside of her academic work, she can often be found in the woods capturing field recordings or at the post office, collecting stamps.
Rupturing signals Zouning Anne Liao
performers:
Arda Cabaoglu Virtanen, trumpet
Kevin von Kampen, percussion
Eunmi Ko, piano
The inspiration for this composition project is to explore the electromagnetic signals that surround us but are not audible in everyday life. Humans emit electromagnetic radiation when making decisions or engaging in activities like driving or choosing what to wear. These brainwave activities alter the electromagnetic field (EMF) signals. I find it fascinating that these physical EMF signals can be transformed and amplified into audio signals, allowing us to hear the sonic differences between devices like laptops and iPhones.
In Rupturing Signals, the ensemble and electronics collaborate to recreate different rhythmic and frequency patterns of the EMF. This composition aims to highlight the unstable, ever-changing, and instantly breaking characteristics of the recorded audio signals.
MONODRAMA*
Soloist: Jamie Jordan
Jamie Jordan devotes herself to music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Ms. Jordan has collaborated with NY Philharmonic musicians on CONTACT!, the Orchestra’s new-music series, and their chamber music series at Merkin Hall. Other ensembles she has worked with include American Composers Orchestra, Bob Becker Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, Experiments in Opera, LA Phil New Music Group, Mantra Percussion, New York New Music Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Talujōn. Jamie has appeared at the American Academy in Rome, Cornell University, Eastman School of Music, Ithaca College, University of Notre Dame, New York University, Syracuse University, University of Maryland, and University of Pennsylvania, among many others. She has performed with Alia Musica Pittsburgh, Baltimore Lieder Weekend, Bargemusic, Bang on a Can Marathon, Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Music Series, CAMP (Contemporary Art Music Project, Tampa, Fla.), FeNAM (Festival of New American Music, Sacramento State University), June in Buffalo, Music on the Edge (University of Pittsburgh), NYCEMF, NOCCO (Seattle), Resonant Bodies Festival, String Orchestra of Brooklyn, and Unruly Music Festival (University of Milwaukee). Jamie Jordan is profoundly grateful for the profound vocal artistry and wisdom of Judith Kellock, Lauralyn Kolb, and Susan Davenny-Wyner. She is passionate about music literacy and teaches piano and voice throughout the NY metropolitan area.
The Dance of the Swallow * text and music by Parastoo Shafiei
performers:
Soloist: Jamie Jordan, voice
Ensemble:
Julianna Eidle, flute
Katherine Weintraub, saxophone
Arda Cabaoglu Virtanen, trumpet
Kevin von Kampen percussion
Eunmi Ko, piano
Sini Virtanen Cabaoglu, violin
Sebastian Stefanovic, viola
Yeil Park, cello
The Dance of the Swallow is an auto-opera for solo soprano and a chamber ensemble of eight players, written for Jamie Jordan. It functions as a psychological ritual of exile and memory. Drawing inspiration from the stark imagery of Forough Farrokhzad’s The House is Black, the work transcends linear narrative to explore the internal landscape of a suspended psyche.
The protagonist is haunted by the "black house" of her origin—a place that exists now only through the distorted lens of distance—where the act of looking back becomes both comfort and poison. Through vocal gestures ranging from anxious fragility to profound lament, she navigates the "agony of exile," portraying life as a fleeting gust of wind.
The swallow, a symbol of migration, serves as the central metaphor for a journey that finds no earthly destination. As the soprano interacts with the "vague darkness" of her surroundings, she confronts the futility of beauty and the phantom-like nature of the past. The opera does not resolve in liberation; instead, it dwells within the "luminous ivy entangled with darkness," capturing the moment where the desire for flight meets the reality of captivity. It is an intimate, abstract self-portrait that transforms the silence of the forgotten into a haunting sonic architecture.
TEXT and translation by Parastoo Shafiei:
The world is pregnant with futility.
Life is wind.
How dreadful is the agony of exile.
Like a small, anxious sparrow, I sit alone on the roof,
like those who have long been dead.
The shadow of sorrow rests on my eyelashes.
I set out for the land of no return!
To the land of vague darkness!
And I remember you,
in a shadow of blackness and an infectious illusion.
I await the light, and there is no light.
I remember you.
Memory is not the event itself; it is its illusion or its fantasy.
I remember you.
And you, O forgotten one of the days, who dress yourself in a shroud and brighten your eyes with kohl,
remember that you have made yourself beautiful in vain.
Remember that life is wind.
In the distance, a light goes out!
There is no liberation!
They have made me drink the wine of wandering.
My being, like a cage full of migrating birds, overflows with the moans of captivity.
I wish I had the wings of a swallow; I would fly away and be at rest.
I would migrate to a sanctuary, far from the futility of life.
There is no liberation!
Luminous ivy entangled with darkness.
Upon the pale threshold, with a haze of agony.
There is no liberation!
Parastoo Shafiei, born in 1999, earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in music composition from the Arts University of Tehran and Tehran University, respectively. Currently, she is studying for a Doctor of Musical Arts in music composition at Boston University.
She Dances * text and music by Negar Soley
performers:
Soloist
Jamie Jordan, voice
Ensemble
Kevin von Kampen, percussion
Sini Virtanen Cabaoglu, violin
Sebastian Stefanovic, viola
She Dances is inspired by the life and artistic legacy of Izumi no Okuni, a dancer and entertainer who is believed to have invented Kabuki theatre during the early Edo period in Japan. It is also inspired by the gender divide and the historical shift from a super female-oriented dance to an all-male dance after women were banned from Kabuki performances in 1620, believed to be due to “immoral behavior.”
While writing the piece, I read Kabuki Dancer by Sawako Ariyoshi, drawn to Okuni’s spirit and dedication as dance became the vital point of her life. Inspired by her focus, I delved into the rhythmic world of the piece, inspired by Kabuki rhythmic structures and percussion practices, working with them every day while singing. Gradually, the percussion, violin, and viola transformed into a world of rhythmic dance, exploring textural shifts of the imagination, while the singer became the tune of the stage, making the voice itself both an actress and a dancer.
At its core, this piece is an exploration of imagination, not as an escape, but as a vital force: a means of shaping experience, confronting obstacles, and envisioning something beyond.
TEXT by Negar Soley
She traveled to dance.
She traveled to
dance,
dance.
She traveled to dance.
She
dance.
She dances.
Behind the mask it may be her.
Too erotic to dance.
She becomes the dance.
Negar Soley is an Iranian composer, vocalist, and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores multiplicity, memory, and the emotional textures of everyday life. Drawing on field recordings, improvisation, poetry, and embodied performance, her music moves between delicacy and intensity, revealing the coexistence of multiple selves within a single voice. She earned her bachelor’s degree in music composition from the Tehran University of Art and moved to the U.S. to study at Wesleyan University, where she graduated in 2025 with a Master of Arts in Music. She currently lives and works in Philadelphia and is active as a composer-performer.
Carved into Scent: on trepidation, and what follows*
text and music by Mojan Alaiyeh
Performers:
Soloist
Jamie Jordan, voice
Ensemble
Kevin von Kampen, percussion
Eunmi Ko, piano
Yeil Park, cello
In Carved into Scent: on trepidation, and what follows, memory becomes a way of facing fragility. The impulse for this work emerged while reading Irvin Yalom, whose reflections on existential vulnerability led me to wonder whether creating art could transform anxiety into presence.
The story of the opera is deeply personal, and the libretto draws on my own memories and lived experiences. Like Marcel Proust’s notion of involuntary memory, a scent becomes the portal through which past and present fold into one another. The story unfolds through fragments of childhood, distance, and the subtle shadow that walks beside attachment. In one scene, the text was shaped in dialogue with the emotional world of Nazım Hikmet’s writings, whose reflections on longing and separation resonate with the work’s inner questions. Musically, the opera unfolds within a contemporary classical language shaped by my Iranian and Azeri musical background.
In shaping this piece, I began to imagine that creation itself might be an act of quiet defiance, a way of carving something into time. In this sense, the work moves from trepidation toward attentiveness, from shadow toward presence. Carved into Scent ultimately asks what follows vulnerability. Perhaps what remains is hope, not as certainty, but as the courage to love, to dream, and the quiet insistence that life continues in the stories we tell and the sounds we leave behind.
Mojan Alaiyeh (b. 1994, Iran) is an Amsterdam-based composer and musician working in concert and film music. Trained in classical composition at Tehran University of Art and holding a Master’s in Composing for Film and Media from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, her work blends storytelling, Iranian musical heritage, and literary inspiration. Her scores have accompanied award-winning films, and her concert works have been commissioned and premiered by festivals including Gaudeamus and Grachtenfestival, where she also curated Migration of Violets, highlighting Iranian female composers. Mojan teaches film music in the Young Talent program at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and serves on the jury for the Keep an Eye Film Score Award.
CAMPGround26 People
Board: Eunmi Ko, Kevin von Kampen, Katherine Weintraub, Zach Hale
Technical Director: Zach Hale
Live Streaming/Video: Robert Voisey
Photo: Patrick Chin Ting Chan
Intern: Wren Whalen, YoungJun Lee, James Larkins
Head Usher/Volunteer: Hannah Lanese
Volunteer: Sean Mcbride, Demetrius Galindez