CompFest
Each year, Emory CompFest brings innovative national and international musicians to Emory and Atlanta. Featured artists have included Sam Pluta & Peter Evans, Natacha Diels, Timuçin Şahin, Annea Lockwood, Yarn/Wire, and others. During their residencies, the artists work with students and faculty and present their music in concert. We seek artists who work in ways that expand traditional compositional frameworks and who can offer exciting and meaningful creative exchanges with the community.
CompFest 2025: In Our Own House
CompFest 2025 “In Our Own House” looks local to explore building creative arts community within and around Emory. The Festival features Atlanta-based new music ensemble Bent Frequency and composer Alvin Singleton. Each of the works on the Festival program were selected for the different ways they build community as an experimental art practice. Singleton’s chamber quartet In Our Own House, whose title inspired the Festival theme, opens the first night’s concert. It invites a question: what is “our” house?
This past fall, Bent Frequency worked with six Emory student composers in an extended residency to create a suite of miniatures. These will be presented on the first night’s concert, which also includes Emory Professor Dwight Andrews’ Three Baldwin Poems (sung by the brilliant Maria Clark, Emory Artist Affiliate in voice) and Paresthesia, a new electronic piece by Emory Assistant Professor Adam Mirza.
The second night opens with Singleton’s Every Next Day, which was commissioned by Bent Frequency in 2022. Virtuoso flautist Lina Andonovska, who joins Emory’s performance faculty in Fall 2025, performs a solo piece from Singleton’s Argoru series. New music guitarist Jesse Langen visits from Chicago to perform Sivan Cohen Elias’s Engine Room, from another angle with Andonovska and to join Bent Frequency for Camilles, a chamber composition with electronics by Emory Assistant Professor Katherine Young.
The concluding work on the Festival is Raven Chacon’s American Ledger No. 1, which is described by the composer as “a narrative score for performance, telling the creation story of the founding of the United States of America.” The graphic score for this performance will take the form of a large flag. It is being created by students and faculty under the direction of Dana Haugaard (Emory Director of Visual Arts), who received guidance from the composer. Bent Frequency will lead an ensemble made up of faculty, students and guest artists.
CompFest 2025 is sponsored by Emory Arts, Hightower, Emory Friends of Music, Emory Visual Arts, Theater, Dance, and Music departments.
All events take place in Emory's Performing Arts Studio, free and open to the public.
1804 N. Decatur Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30022
Recommended parking: Parking lot adjacent to the building on Burlington Road or Gambrell/Lowergate South Parking Deck.
Friday, Feb. 7, Concert at 8pm

Pre-concert talk at 7pm
Creativity Conversation with Alvin Singleton
Concert program features:
- Alvin Singleton, In Our Own House
- soprano sax, trumpet, snare drum, piano
- Adam Mirza,Paresthesia
- stereo fixed audio
- Alvin Singleton, Argoru VII
- vibraphone
- Dwight Andrews, Three Baldwin Poems
- soprano and piano
- Emory Student Composers, Suite
- saxophone and percussion
Saturday, Feb. 8, Concert at 8pm

Pre-concert talk at 7pm
Creativity Conversation on Community Building as Experimental Art Practice
- Alvin Singleton, Every Next Day
- soprano sax and percussion
- Sivan Cohen Elias, Engine Room, from another angle
- flute and electric guitar
- Alvin Singleton, Argoru III
- flute
- Katherine Young, Camilles
- saxophone, electric guitar, piano, percussion, and electronics
- Raven Chacon, American Ledger No 1
- open instrumentation