Time/Play: Chamber Music for Violin, Percussion, and Piano

For Time/Play, associate professor and violinist Natalie Lin Douglas examines the textural, timbral, and narrative possibilities of the violin, percussion, and piano configuration. The project builds on Lin Douglas and her collaborators’ recent recording of Theo Chandler’s Time Pieces (2024), for violin, percussion quartet, piano, and spoken word. The 2026–27 project centers on the rehearsal, performance, and recording of a second new work: Daniel Temkin’s Stolen Time (2026).

Lin Douglas is joined by percussionist Brady Spitz, assistant professor at Appalachian State University, and pianist Wesley Ducote, principal keyboardist of the Houston Symphony. The project culminates in a public concert at MIT’s Thomas Tull Concert Hall featuring the premieres of both Time Pieces and Stolen Time, alongside Lou Harrison’s Varied Trio (1988), a formative work for this instrumental combination. Following the concert, the trio will record both new works for a full-length album with Grammy Award–winning recording engineer Joel Gordon.

New Zealand-born violinist, educator, and arts entrepreneur Natalie Lin Douglas is the founder and artistic director of Kinetic Ensemble and an associate professor of music at MIT. With Kinetic, she has overseen the curation of eleven concert seasons and commissioned and premiered over two dozen new works.

The ensemble’s recordings have been featured on five albums, including its Billboard chart-topping debut album from 2023. A versatile chamber musician and fierce advocate for under-performed repertoire both old and new, Lin Douglas has performed alongside such acclaimed artists as Clarice Assad, Iva Bittova, Jon Kimura Parker, Miguel Zenón, and Evan Ziporyn, and championed the works of Karim Al-Zand, Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972), and Zoltán Székely, among others.

Biography: MIT Music and Theater Arts
Website: natvln.com

Brady Spitz is a percussionist, timpanist, and educator based in Boone, North Carolina where he is Coordinator of Percussion at Appalachian State University. Spitz has extensive performance experience with classical, contemporary, and world percussion in a diverse group of musical environments. In addition to his widely varied orchestral performing history, he maintains an active chamber music and freelance percussion schedule and has appeared on stage alongside artists such as Idina Menzel, Weird Al Yankovic, and The Who. Spitz holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Rice University, a Bachelor of Music Performance in Percussion from the University of North Texas College of Music and a Master of Music in Percussion Performance from Louisiana State University.

Biography: Appalachian State University
Website: bradyspitz.com

Noted for his “elegant and brilliant pianism” by South Florida Classical Review, pianist and arranger Wesley Ducote has led a diverse musical career pursuing an extensive range of interests. Ducote is the newly appointed Principal Keyboard of the Houston Symphony and Artistic Director of the Louis Moreau Institute. As a collaborator, he has been featured with many of today’s brightest stars including composer/vocalist Kate Soper, Emmy Award-winning composer and Vietnamese folk musician Van Anh Vo, flutists Leone Buyse and Carol Wincenc, clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, soprano Ana Maria Martinez, and many others. An enthusiastic performer of new and contemporary music, Ducote has premiered over forty new works and collaborated with faculty at institutions in China, South Korea, Canada, and all over the United States. Recent highlights include premieres by composers Karim Al-Zand, Anthony Brandt, Theo Chandler, and a new piano concerto by Max Vinetz. He holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in music from Rice University, as well as an undergraduate degree in mathematics.

Biography: Louis Moreau Institute
Social: Instagram

Daniel Temkin (b. 1986) is an award-winning classical composer recognized for music of visceral intensity and beauty. Temkin’s orchestral works have been performed worldwide by the Indianapolis and Nashville symphony orchestras, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Orchestre national d’Ile-de-France, and Russia’s St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic. As a chamber and vocal composer, he has collaborated with soloists including David Shifrin, Ida Kavafian, Francisco Fullana, and Alexi Kenney, as well as with such ensembles as the PRISM Quartet, the Aizuri Quartet, Kinetic, and the Garth Newel Piano Quartet, and with members of CMS Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic, the MET Opera, and the Marlboro Festival.

Temkin’s music has been heard at the Dresden Festival, Banff, Fontainebleau, Aspen, Yellow Barn, Kneisel Hall, and Caramoor, and on over fifteen recordings, including his critically-praised albums Colors and Maksimal. He has held residencies at Chamber Music Northwest, Music From Angel Fire, and the Austin Chamber Music Center.

Featured widely on broadcast media in the United States. and abroad, Temkin has appeared as a guest lecturer at over twenty-five universities and conservatories worldwide. A veteran new music performer and curator, he also serves the broader contemporary-music community as a judge, panelist, author, and educator. From 2017 to 2025, Temkin taught at Bucknell University, where he held the Samuel L. Williams Chair in Music.

Website: danieltemkincomposer.com

Throughout his body of work, composer Theo Chandler explores music’s profound and mysterious capacity to depict sensations, images, and human experience. His recent compositions have become increasingly personal and vulnerable, driven by a passion for creating emotional and spiritual openings for his audience. Chandler’s aesthetic interweaves inventive orchestral effects with rich melodic lines. Paper City Magazine has praised his work for its “stunning, musically sophisticated combination of simplicity and complexity suffused with deep emotion.”

Website: theochandler.com

Michael Metz is a versatile percussionist from Louisville, Kentucky and has been a member of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra since 2022. Metz has performed as a substitute percussionist with the Cincinnati, St. Louis, Hawaii, Chautauqua, and Houston Symphonies, as well as the Houston Grand Opera and Opera Theatre of St. Louis. As a chamber musician, he was a member of the Monarch Chamber Players from 2021 to 2026, and has performed as a guest musician with the Kinetic Ensemble and the Houston Chamber Choir. He has also had the pleasure of performing on drum set with the St. Louis Symphony, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Houston Symphony, and Houston Grand Opera.

Michael Metz is a graduate of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music (BM) and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music (MM), where he studied primarily with John Tafoya and Matthew Strauss.

Biography: Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra
Social: Instagram

Mark Stein, a versatile performer and educator from Coral Springs, Florida, currently lectures in percussion studies at Central Connecticut State University. Previously, he taught students in Houston, Texas. Stein has performed with numerous orchestras and opera companies, including the Houston Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Houston Grand Opera, Houston Ballet, United States Coast Guard Band, Louisiana Philharmonic, Hartford Symphony, New Haven Symphony, Boise Philharmonic, and Springfield (MA) Symphony. He has performed at the Grand Teton Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, Caroga Lake Summer Music Festival, and Tanglewood. In addition to his orchestral work, Stein has performed on timpani and percussion for artists like Roberta Flack, REO Speedwagon, Kansas, The Alan Parsons Project, and Little River Band. He also contributed to the Houston Chamber Choir’s recording of Bob Chilcott’s Circlesong.

Stein earned a Bachelors of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, his Master’s from the New England Conservatory, and further studied at Boston University and Rice University. His teachers include Sergio Carreno, Richard Weiner, Paul Yancich, Dan Bauch, Tim Genis, Kyle Brightwell, and Matthew Strauss.

Biography: Central Connecticut State University
Social: LinkedIn

Grammy award-winning recording engineer Joel Gordon has engineered and produced countless classical, contemporary, and world music albums, along with live and field recordings made in the United States, Europe, and Asia. For over twenty years, he served as producer for WGBH Radio in Boston, overseeing more than one thousand live performances, concerts, and studio recordings, as well as special radio music programs. His ethnographic field recordings can be heard on Smithsonian Folkways Records. For his work with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gordon has been praised as a “master of capturing… crisp, layered sound…within the airy spaciousness of historic Jordan Hall.”

Biography: Musica Omnia

Performance
Natalie Lin Douglas, violin
Brady Spitz, percussion
Wesley Ducote, piano
Dan Temkin, composer/percussion
Theo Chandler, composer/narrator
Michael Metz, percussion
Mark Stein, percussion

Album
Recording Engineer: Joel Gordon

Time/Play: Chamber Music for Violin, Percussion, and Piano is supported with a faculty grant from the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology and is co-presented with MIT Music and the MTA Events Office.