CONCERT 2 Noon Time Concert at Tempus Projects
FRIDAY, MARCH 6, at 12 pm
*denotes world premiere
A Real Buster Dylan Findley
Katherine Weintraub, saxophone
A Real Buster is a multimedia work for tenor saxophone, live electronics, and video that considers Buster Keaton’s legacy as a comic actor and as a filmmaker. The name Buster, given to him by Harry Houdini, referred to his extreme resilience to pain, which is manifest in his dangerous stunts featured in his movies. The video element directly interacts with the performer in another of his tropes, “Man vs. Machine,” as if sentient. The music samples a variety of early popular and classical recordings from the 1920s.
With music that “sweeps us away with its energy and liveliness,” (AM:plified Magazin, Germany) Dylan Findley’s music explores and expresses intangible truths through the convergence of heart, mind, spirit, and body, without disregarding the power of irony and dry wit. He is an avid collaborator with musicians and artists of other mediums, with commissioned premieres on three continents and across the United States. His music weaves musical styles together and often incorporate audiovisual and other electronic elements for an immersive experience. Dylan has received commissions from the City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, the Barlow Endowment, the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, and the São Paulo Contemporary Composers Festival Orchestral Commissioning Project, and his works have been featured by the McCormick Percussion Group, Ensemble Mise-En, newEar, Transient Canvas, Galán Trio, members of the Cleveland Orchestra, Quarteto L’Arianna, and Mnemosyne Quartet, Great Noise Ensemble.
prisms and mirrors Paul Novak
Julianna Eidle, flute
Calvin Falwell, clarinet
Kevin von Kampen, percussion
Eunmi Ko, piano
Sini Virtanen Cabaoglu, violin
Yeil Park, cello
I’m fascinated by prismatic forms: structures that continuously refract and reflect, kaleidoscopically shifting and evolving but at the same time static and unchanging. I imagine a light shined through a series of crystals and mirrors, shimmering into colorful spectra and bouncing in unexpected directions. Similarly, prisms and mirrors maps a single idea through a series of musical refractions and reflections, a set of continuous variations which is by turns textural, rhythmic, and melodic. To me, this concept of musical form resonates with the beautifully collaborative nature of writing music, in which all ideas are continually refracted throughout the course of notation, interpretation, and performance. prisms and mirrors musically enacts this refraction, with all the fragility, intricacy, and color of a prism refracting light.
prisms and mirrors was commissioned by the Boston New Music Initiative as part of their 2020-21 season. It is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano.
The "spellbinding" (Washington Post) music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak immerses listeners in shimmering and subtly crafted musical worlds full of color, motion, light, and magic. His recent projects engage with dreams and memory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. Novak has been commissioned by and collaborated with orchestras, chamber ensembles, and musicians around the world. He has received awards from the Fromm Foundation, Barlow Endowment, ASCAP, BMI, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and more. He is 2026-29 composer-in-residence of the California Symphony, the co-artistic director and flutist of Chicago-based ensemble Mycelium New Music, and is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago.
Retire, retire Young-Jun Lee
Katherine Weintraub, saxophone
Calvin Falwell, clarinet
In this piece, I reflect on the multifaceted nature of retirement—not as a slow descent into decline, but as a profound transformation of identity and agency. The work traces the gradual fading of cognitive abilities such as memory, perception, and stamina, acknowledging the reality of aging, yet ultimately affirming that retirement marks not an end, but a new beginning. The title Retire, retire plays with dual meanings: to retire from a profession, and to retire the very concept of "retirement" as mere withdrawal. Musically, the piece evolves from traditionally notated pitch and rhythm into graphic elements, inviting performers into an increasingly liberated space of interpretation. This shift empowers the performer to rediscover autonomy, allowing them to choose, respond, and redefine their role—suggesting that with the loosening of formal constraints comes not loss, but freedom.
Young-Jun Lee is a Korean composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist based in Baltimore and New York City. His work explores memory, time, identity, and multisensory perception, often integrating music with movement, visual art, language, and site-specific performance.
His music has been performed internationally across North America, Europe, and Asia in concert halls, festivals, and alternative spaces. Lee is a MacDowell Fellow and has received recognition from the Peabody Conservatory and the Fontainebleau School, including the Prix de Collaboration Inter-écoles, the Special Prize from the Ise-Shima International Composition Competition, and the John Bavicchi and Vuk Kulenovic Memorial Prizes.
He is the co-founder and artistic director of the New Uncertainty Collective, an artist-led platform dedicated to experimental performance and interdisciplinary collaboration. He is currently completing a DMA in Composition at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, alongside a Master’s degree in Music Theory Pedagogy.
into the tree waves Chen-Hui Jen
Eunmi Ko, piano
“The boundless wind whispers in the trees,
at times dancing, then returning to silence.
In the mingled breath between pine needles and grass,
a lonely light trembles softly.
From afar, uneven chimes drift in the wind;
a punctual train whistle, like a falling star,
fleetingly flares across the stillness
then vanishes into deep moonlight.
Time descends without a sound.”
into the tree waves reflects one of the most exquisite memories in my life during my residence in February 2023 at the Copland House in Cortlandt Manor, New York, when I was surrounded by quiet woods and constantly watched the changing light between branches day and night, a peaceful solitude. To evoke a sense of the tree waves in the wind, the work is filled with a constant rhythmic flow like a spontaneous nature and consists of five continuous states: wind rising from the dancing lights; whispering tree shadows; in the breezy waves; fading bells in twilight colors; and moonrise over the calming woods.
Chen-Hui Jen is a composer, poet, and pianist, whose music presents an imaginative, spiritual, and poetic space with subtlety and sophistication. She writes concert music for diverse instrumentation, including orchestra, chorus, solo and chamber music for western and Asian instruments, as well as electronics. Chen-Hui Jen's musical works reflect an angle of contemporary art music and often evoke a captivating atmosphere that integrates time, sound, color, and poetry. Holding a Ph.D. degree in music at the University of California, San Diego, she was also one of the awardees of League of American Orchestras Women Composers' Reading and Commission Project and the Copland House Residency.
Kamal Arjan Singh
Kevin von Kampen, percussion
Kamal refers to the lotus flower, an important symbol in Sikhi and in Punjabi culture that signifies spiritual enlightenment and purity. The lotus flower grows in the murkiest of waters but always rises and floats above, facing up towards the sky. This piece, my first for solo percussion, focuses on the delicateness of movement and the physicality of tension and release.
Arjan Singh is a composer and performer based in New York who creates art to understand and contextualize his relationship with time, nature, and his culture. He invites audiences experiencing his art to challenge their own perception of time, and reflect on their connection to the natural and unnatural environments that surround them. Arjan is particularly interested in exploring perplexing elements of lived experience, such as space, perspective, memory, and temporal realms, and seeks meaning in the places where these elements intersect, interplay, and contradict. Arjan completed his undergraduate at the Berklee College of Music and received his Masters in Composition at the Mannes School of Music where he studied with Christopher Cerrone. He also grew up studying Hindustani Classical violin with Dr. Sisirkana Dhar Choudhury, and Hindustani music continues to play a key role in his musical practice. Arjan is currently pursuing a DMA in Composition at Columbia University.
Szenografie I * Youshin Gim
CAMP ensemble commission
I. Eine Betrunkene Männer A Drunken Guys
II. Graffiti a akordeon v holešovickém podchodu Graffiti and Accordion at Holesovice Underpass
III. Muzurek dla Oświęcimia Muzurka for Oświęcim
IV. The Blind City La Cité Aveugle
performers:
Katherine Weintraub, saxophone
Kevin von Kampen, percussion
Eunmi Ko, piano
The piece Szenografie I is the first street-theatre suite in the Szenografie I - V series. While the word "scenography" commonly refers to stage design or scenery construction, I view it as the essential art and technology required to complete a stage. In my music, I approach scenography through musical technique. Individual techniques and materials are built and integrated to create scenic contexts and stage dimensions for the lyrical process. In short, Szenografie I is a dramaturgy composed of musical techniques for a trio, where I reinforce the role of "technique" to construct my own sonic scene.
These 4 short movements will guide you into this dramaturgy, start from the 1st Episode: A Drunken Guys(Eine Betrunkene Männer), 2nd Episode: Graffiti and Accordion at Holesovice Underpass(Graffiti a akordeon v holešovickém podchodu), 3rd Episode: Mazurka for Oświęcim (Mazurek dla Oświęcimia), 4th Episode: The Blind City(La Cité Aveugle).
Youshin Gim is a Korea-based Artist, currently residing in Germany. For the last several years, he dedicated his musical aesthetic by expanding his interests on traditional cultures(also anti-traditional), religions and natural phenomenons, literatures, social and political issues to connect, rebirth them into stage works. An artistic works from himself has been presented through Ensemble Intercontemporain(Emmanuelle Ophèle-Gaubert), Klangforum Wien, Hashtag Ensemble, CAMP, Filharmonia Poznańska, Ensemble EINS, Syntagma Duo, Mivos Quartet, Sonor XXI, TIMF Ensemble, Trio Aether, Ensemble E-MEX and Festivals Poznańska Wiosna Muzyczna, Sonus Novus München, GMMFS, St. Petersburg Contemporary Festival, Barcelona Modern, Chillida-Leku, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Slovenia Composer Society, Dresden Palucca, Warsaw Int. Book Conference, Chemnitz Funken, TIMF Academy (with Unsuk Chin). Youshin is currently artistic director of Yeongwol Contemporary Music Festival since 2022, as well as former Residence Composer at SONOR XXI, working as an executive arranger and pianist at Slovakia & Abu Dhabi-based entertainment company The Road of Classics.
sang de glacier Emily Koh
I. Pink Hour Sparkles
II. The Calving
III. Shards of Bio-Glass
Eunmi Ko, piano and toy piano
sang de glacier (French for ‘glacial blood’) is the phenomenon of alpine snow turning pink or red due to blooms of snow algae (such as Chlamydomonas nivalis), which use pigments to protect themselves from ultraviolet light, potentially accelerating melting. As a non-French speaker, I read this also as ‘sang the glacier’, which imagines the swansong a glacier might/will sing as it nears its end.
Emily Koh is a Singaporean composer based in Atlanta, Georgia whose music reimagines everyday experiences by sonically expounding tiny oft-forgotten details, and explores binary states such as extremities/boundaries and activity/stagnation. She especially enjoys collaborating with creatives of other specializations. Emily is ¼ of ensemble vim, a Atlanta-based and women-led new music collective, and is Associate Professor of Music Composition at the University of Georgia. Emily enjoys mountains, horror movies and a good cup of tea.
Roads Around Mountains: five miniatures for four instruments* John Liberatore
CAMP ensemble commission
1. Yes, I live inside the piano
2. As bendy-spined as bandy snakes
3. held in no one moment, but embraced
4. Come soon, you feral cats
5. It is?
performers:
Katherine Weintraub, saxophone
Kevin von Kampen, percussion
Eunmi Ko, piano
Sebastian Stefanovic, viola
“Yes, I live inside the piano,” writes Katerina Rudcenkova, “but there is no need/ for you to come and visit me.” Atsuro Riley pens the phrase “As bendy-spined as bandy snakes,” and continues “through saltshrub yaupon needle-brake.” “The Universe held in no one moment, but embraced,” is a line from A. Kendra Greene’s essay about The Universe, a cat, and also the universe, a universe. A poem by W. S. Di Piero gives us, “Come soon, you feral cats,” but it’s about poems, not cats. “It is?” asks an unflappably optimistic pink bunny.
Eileen Myles writes:
Roads around mountains
cause we can’t drive
through
That’s Poetry
to Me.
John Liberatore is a composer with many interests. He is a classical and jazz pianist, narrator, educator, professional owl, occasionally a writer, and one the world’s few glass harmonica players. Noted for its “beguiling playfulness” (Textura), his distinct compositional voice combines many styles and influences, with an emphasis on instrumental color and textural clarity—“to feel pulled along at varying speeds in multiple directions, but always forward” (Cleveland Classical). He is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Tanglewood, the Brush Creek Arts Foundation, the I-Park Artist’s Enclave, and the Millay Colony, and commissions from the Fromm and Barlow Foundations, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition, and the American Opera Initiative, among other organizations. Through a 2012 Presser Music Award, he studied in Tokyo with Jo Kondo—a mentorship that made an indelible impression on his music. Commercial recordings of his music can be heard on New Focus, Albany, Innova, Ravello, Centaur, and False Azure record labels. Since 2015, he has taught at the University of Notre Dame, where he serves as Associate Professor of Composition and Theory.
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