Tampa’s CAMPground 25 brings together musical marriages, feminism, and international collaboration

Eunmi Ko has been surrounded by music her entire life.

A beloved teacher and musical mentor at the University of South Florida, the highly accomplished recitalist and chamber musician has founded and directed multiple musical projects, ensembles and collaborations. One of her biggest ventures is the Contemporary Art Music Project (also known as CAMPGround25), a nonprofit organization that encourages international musical collaboration by bringing musicians together from all around the globe.

“We have this huge gathering of the best players I know every year,” Ko told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “They all come and have this week of music making, and it’s really inspiring how much they care about music. It makes me keep doing what I’m doing for the entire year.”

According to contemporaryartmusicproject.org, the three-day event includes over a dozen performers showcasing new music, including some world premieres.

The festival runs from March 13-15 and features talent from Eastern Asia, Europe and right here in Tampa Bay, spanning a variety of genres. These groups include the East Asian ensemble PAN Project and Tampa’s own Tempus Projects and street dance group, the Disfunktionals.

Ko is excited to reveal this year’s Project theme: musical marriage—an idea that goes deeper than you might expect.

“It’s a marriage between East Asian music, western music and the Disfunktionals, and it’s also a marriage between art, music and street dance.” said Ko.

To show its love for Tampa, CAMPGround25 organizes each day of the festival in different parts of the city:

Day one will be held in historic Ybor City at the Tempus Projects in Ybor City, a venue that supports local music and artists by hosting captivating and experimental exhibitions year-round.

The next day takes place in Tampa Heights at The Red Door No. 5, an old firehouse known for its historic design and pivotal architecture.

The third and final day will have two big concerts: The first show is at the Seminole Heights Garden Center followed by a final house concert at the Campground in East Tampa.

Redefining love for music
This year, CAMP is about celebrating love just as much as music.

Performers Arda Cabaoglu and Sini Virtanen are celebrating one year of marriage during the event. The pair first met during CAMP the previous year, and have been together ever since.

Love is what keeps Ko motivated to continue working everyday.

“It’s not like you have this concert, go to the concert hall, sit down and listen to music,” Ko explained. “It’s a very rich experience; the collaboration has been my favorite part when we put these kinds of events into the community.”

It’s also what inspired Jehoshaphat Jacinto to bring Tampa’s street dancing community together with the founding of the DisFunktionals, a nonprofit street dancing group devoted to welcoming everyone who wants to be a part of the street dancing community.

Jacinto, who’s known as JepStar amongst other street dancers, has been breaking it down for over 15 years since he moved to Tampa from the Philippines. The group came to be after Jacinto and his friends decided to avoid rush hour traffic after work by dancing in the breezeways at USF’s main campus.

“I found a spot right by financial aid and began dancing,” said Jacinto. “Street dancing is one of the only styles offered outside traditional dance styles.”

He later decided to start offering free classes, welcoming anyone who wanted to learn the craft.

“Our main thing is inclusion,” said DisFunktionals’ treasurer Fernando Contreras, also known as Myxo. “Out in the world, people want a space where they feel they belong. We’ve had people feel that welcoming energy and felt comfortable in the classes.”

In addition to founding the DisFunktionals crew, Jacinto also participates in other nonprofits that help fund local youth cultural programs centered around dancing, such as the Prodigy Cultural Arts Program and She’s Got It.

Ko’s innovative use of matching the energy of lights with the music’s frequency is what originally piqued Jacinto’s interest in joining the festival.

Now, street dancing continues to add depth and an entertaining physical element to complement CAMPGround’s live music performances, making sure the event will have something for everyone.

“We don’t choose how we come into this world,” said Contreras. “But the DisFunktionals help us create a sense of belonging.”

A timely event: Women’s History Month
While CAMP is about celebrating incredible musical talent from all backgrounds, it’s also taking place during a month that’s historically significant for female musicians: Women’s History Month.

The annual celebration began after the creation of Women’s week by California’s Sonoma County Commission back in 1981 to remember the New York City garment workers’ strikes that occurred more than fifty years prior.

In addition to being the president and treasurer of CAMP, Ko was also the assistant director of the Women in Music Festival, which takes in Rochester, New York, and hosts more than 100 female performers each year. “[Female composers] have a really bright, promising future,” said Ko. “When I think about my time in college, we knew [of] some women composers from 200-300 years ago.”

In this year’s CAMPground lineup, about half of the performers and composers are female.

She went on to explain how many female musicians, such as Clara Schumann—celebrated for her groundbreaking piano recitals and compositions in 19th-century Germany—are often overshadowed by their husbands or other prominent male relatives.

“In college, we learned about her husband [Robert Schumann] first, and that’s how people explored her music, because of her husband,” she said. “That’s how we considered women’s music at the time.”

With over a decade’s worth of global performances, Ko has seen how the treatment of women—particularly in the evolving world of orchestral music—has changed overtime.

It’s events like CAMP that not only foster global cooperation but promote gender equality and empowerment for female musicians.

“It’s not like that anymore,” she said. “Women can have their works without relying on anyone, and I think they have a really bright future. It’s very exciting.”

Tickets to CAMPground25 happening Thursday-Sunday, March 13-15 at various venues in Tampa are still available and start at $15.

Readers are invited to submit their own events to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s things to do calendar.

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This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 5, 2025.