Music and performance have been an essential part of Temple Ambler’s history since the very beginning.
At Temple University Ambler’s predecessor, the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, students hosted elaborate May Day festivals each year.
In 1968, performances by Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, and Van Cliburn marked the debut season of the Temple Music Festival and Institute, which welcomed thousands to performances for many years.
In more recent years, the Boyer College of Music and Dance has given the campus community and visitors a taste of the talents of their students and faculty through special concerts and performance previews. In 2024, that partnership morphed into the first (Re)Charge Festival, hosted on campus by Temple Ambler and the Center for the Performing and Cinematic Arts.
That first event, which welcomed an eclectic group of musicians, artists and dancers, built the foundation for this year’s, 2nd Annual (Re) Charge Festival, which will be held at Temple Ambler on Tuesday, April 29, from 11 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Register online here.
“(Re)Charge started out as way to connect artists and the sciences to address issues related to the environment and climate change. I had reached out to the Temple Ambler Field Station after I read about the impact of the tornado that struck Temple Ambler and the fascinating research that has come out of that,” said Jillian Harris, Associate Professor of Dance and Coordinator for the Department of Dance. “After touring the Field Station and the important work they were doing, I felt this was something that artists could be inspired by. This was also at a time of great anxiety — it was the tail end of the pandemic — and I think more and more people were recognizing how therapeutic it can be to immerse oneself in nature, to really reconnect with natural spaces.”
George Hemcher, Career Development Coordinator for the Center for the Performing and Cinematic Arts who is coordinating (Re) Charge with Harris, said he felt the idea of showcasing the work of Boyer students while also placing a spotlight on the resources of the Ambler Arboretum, the Field Station and Temple Ambler “presented a great opportunity.”
“One of the things I’ve been involved with in recent years is developing wellness programs for our students and this all fits into those concepts perfectly. I’d say the mission of the (Re)Charge Festival is working together to stimulate individual, community and planetary wellness,” he said. “You can’t just focus on yourself; you have to think about all of the other parts that make us human. This event isn’t just about the collaboration between the arts and sciences — it’s about giving students the opportunity to come out to Temple Amber and enjoy nature and their surroundings while immersing themselves in the different performances that will be taking place. Sometimes wellness is as simple as sitting under a tree and enjoying some music.”
A Merging of Performance, Science and Nature
Participants in (Re)Charge are invited to become immersed in nature and art in the Ambler Arboretum while they enjoy art installations, music and dance performances, theatrical performances, bonsai making, student lightning talks, creative collage and button-making! Learn more about the performances and programs here.
(Re)Charge Festival 2025 presentations will include:
Refugia: Portal to Shelter
Created by Dr. Laua Katz Rizzo, Refugia is an installation built from modular art objects created with fallen branches bound together with rope and yarn. The structure of the installation makes a welcoming and protective space people can enter and pass through, integrating more fully with their environment and themselves.
Introduction to Bonsai
Master of Landscape Architecture student Joseph Rozek will provide a hands-on bonsai workshop. With more than a decade of experience, including training with renowned bonsai masters like Mauro Stemberger and Walter Pall, Rozek will guide participants through the essential techniques of bonsai care.
According to Rozek, his introduction to bonsai was rooted in a love of “creating artistic spaces.”
“It’s the primary reason I went into Landscape Architecture as well,” said Rozek, who has also taught high school biology. “I felt that if I could be involved in getting people to cooperate toward a common goal, I could create artistic spaces on a grander scale.”
Rozek said he has been able to study with several bonsai masters “because Pennsylvania is actually a hub for bonsai.”
“Trees speak to me, I have very formative memories with trees — when you watch them in the garden as see the wind blow through the leaves, you just know it’s for you or not,” he said. “One of the things you have to do as a hobbyist is realize your limitations and how much you can actually give to each tree. Your first inclination it to get as many as possible — one of each species — but you truly need to home in and narrow your focus to make progress.”
During (Re)Charge, Rozek said, “I’d like to correct some of what I call the foundational falsehoods of bonsai.”
“I think the way that a lot of people are exposed to bonsai — the mass-produced trees you find in grocery stores, the seed kits — aren’t a very good introduction. I want to give people an idea of what they are going to see in the first year, the third year, the fifth year,” he said. “I want to show off the tools that people can use and talk a bit about maintenance and garden design and tailoring your collection for your micro-habitat.”
TUKovers Presents: Love — Your Being and Your Environment
TUKovers seeks to celebrate cultural diversity through an energetic and engaging performance of K-Pop music and dance. With a set of upbeat, inspiring and crowd-pleasing songs, the group aims to showcase how love for the Earth and its inhabitants expressed in music transcends cultural and stylistic boundaries.
According to senior Psychology major Caitlyn Clay, the impetus behind creating the TUKovers club “was that we wanted to be able to both sing our K-pop songs in addition to dancing.”
“We wanted to create an environment that was beginner friendly. We wanted a club where you wouldn't have to audition — you could still be in TUKcovers and participate and do things; it is open to anybody,” she said. “We wanted to develop a space where you make friends, love K-pop and just have a great time. We have put out three filmed covers and have a ton more in production; we were able to host a showcase earlier this semester — when we heard about the (Re)Charge Festival, we thought that would be an amazing opportunity!”
According to Clay, TUKovers has “a dedicated team of dancers” working to get ready for April 29.
“We have prepared a 30-minute set of some of the more iconic K-pop songs in combination with some lesser-known songs that we think are underrated. We have a group of 10 coming and we’ll perform in rotation in small units because dancing for 30-minute straight is very physically demanding,” she said. “For us, this is a wonderful event because as a smaller organization, it helps us get our name out there and our performers want to dance as much as possible. For visitors, hopefully they’ll get some new songs for their playlists and maybe gain a greater understanding of K-pop in general.”
WILD
WILD tells the story of an Indigenous community who must face the colonial threat of industrialization just outside their home. This is a group of five individuals who all connect to the Earth and the universe in unique ways. Respect is paid to the stars, the skies, the land and the sea through incantations meant to summon the strength and wisdom of the elements.
Disconnect featuring the Boyer College Electroacoustic Ensemble Project (BEEP)
Disconnect is a concert-length performance exploring the fragmentation between nature and technology, personal and societal expectations and the shifting role of the natural world in mental health. Through an immersive fusion of live performance, sound design and interactive music, the work generates a sonic environment where the boundaries between the organic and the synthetic blur.
According to Dr. Adam Vidiksis, Associate Professor of Music Studies in the Music Technology program in the Boyer College of Music and Dance and the Director of the Boyer College Electroacoustic Ensemble Project, BEEP was founded in 2013 while he was teaching music theory courses.
“It began pretty organically — four students came to me and said they wanted to do more in that space, creating instruments and performing more with electronic instruments. It really began as a little something extra to do after class, but it continued to grow and then we held a little concert, and then 12 students wanted to be involved and then it became a for credit ensemble course,” he said. “BEEP is a multi-stylistic, multi-genre, diverse ensemble looking to perform with the cutting edge of music technology, which includes all sorts of things. Sometimes that's new analog systems that are coming out or physical computing where we’re using sensors for music and looking at how to apply that to all aspects of music, performance and production. The students are often writing or co-writing with me their own pieces in service of doing these things.”
BEEP, Vidiksis said, is “part ensemble and part laboratory.”
“We are not just coming in and rehearsing repertoire which would be typical of an ensemble. We're more about asking ‘What is this new technology? Let’s explore it, let’s learn about it.’” he said. “For us there are some things that are more classroom and discussion-based where we're figuring things out together and determining how this could be applied in new and interesting ways.”
According to Vidiksis, ensemble members not only come from various programs within Boyer, “but from other Temple programs you might not expect.”
“I'm often meeting amazing electronic musicians from all the different schools and colleges at Temple,” he said. “We'll go to the library and do an electronics workshop and meet someone from the Fox School of Business playing all of these analog modular shows — they didn’t know about the ensemble and they want to become a part of it. It’s a great, eclectic mix of students from throughout the University.”
BEEP, which hosts the long-running Cybersounds Concert Series and has grown to two sections with 60 students total since its inception, is returning to the (Re)Charge Festival for its second year. (Re)Charge and performing in the Ambler Campus gardens, Vidiksis said “was a great fit for us since we are typically doing some kind of environmentally-focused project each year.”
“As people working in technology, it's very important that we're also considering the impacts of the technology that we're using. I always think of music as a way of thinking through the world,” he said. “Here we are using music to think about the environmental impacts of the very technologies that we're working with. The idea around environmentalism and mental health also felt like another nice connection point.”
Student Lightning Talks, Creative Collage and Button-making
Join the Senior Seminar in Environmental Studies and the Undergraduate Association for an engaging program featuring student-led “lightning talks,” interactive activities and creative expression. This session provides a platform for students to present their research and ideas on pressing environmental issues.
Attendees will also have the opportunity to participate in hands-on activities such as button-making station and a collage workshop.
A Wealth of Temple Resources
According to Hemcher, with the sheer size of Temple “sometimes I think we forget or we don’t recognize the incredible resources across all aspects of the University that are available to our students, our faculty, to the public as a whole.
“Taking a moment to create a festival like this, it’s a way we can show other parts of our Temple community and our students these wonderful collaborative opportunities that are available every day. It’s also a showcase of what our students can do when they graduate and go out into the world, especially our art students,” she said. “So much of what we do in our careers is built on collaboration and building projects from the ground up with no resources whatsoever — that's at the heart and foundation of how things happen. Showing that we can do that here at Temple is a great example for what hopefully inspires students to go and do those things on their own when they graduate and become full members of our community in the region.”
For (Re)Charge presenters, Harris said, “I hope that they are inspired by just the interaction they have with the audience members; those kind of soft moments of having conversations with people about their work.”
“I hope they also find inspiration just being in nature. After such a long winter, I'm hoping that those who come out do find that it is rejuvenating, and it charges them up to make it through the end of finals and into summer,” she said. “I really believe in the importance of collaboration, in addressing some of these intractable problems that we are facing as a society. This festival is our small way of encouraging people to hold that philosophy as well, that taking these small steps of connecting with one another on an interpersonal level and connecting with our natural spaces can lead to really positive change.”