Season 2 - 2025
Refugia Festival-Ann Arbor
September 28, 2025 // Nichols Arboretum
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Hosted and Sponsored by Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum


We are honored to collaborate once again with Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum to host Refugia Festival's second season in Ann Arbor!
Refugia Festival 2025 Artists
PC: Vasko (CC-BY-NC-DC license)
Stephanie Vasko
Stephanie E. Vasko is a performance artist who creates works with sound, electronics, sculpture, coding/software, video, and photography. Often taking inspiration from nature and natural phenomena, she combines field recordings, synths, software, and gestural interfaces to perform works that invite audience participation. She has performed at a variety of festivals across the United States. She is the co-founder of both the Ambient Annotations experimental music series and the Reverberator experimental music festival in Lansing, MI.
FLYDLPHN
Based in Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti, FLYDLPHN is a mixed chamber ensemble that advocates for composers by empowering collaborative unrestrictive play. FLYDLPHN cultivates a distinctive panoramic soundscape making extensive use of electro-acoustic, multimedia, and improvised performance. We desire to build a community that empowers the sharing of art from early-career composers and underrepresented voices, and we do so with our various productions in compelling spaces throughout the year. Ultimately we are a collective of friends who are excited to create together. When given one chance to breach the surface of the cosmic soup, we are grateful to be the dolphin in midair showing our best trick to the world. FLYDLPHN is flutist Lexi Eubanks, clarinetist Oliver Bishop, bassoonist Bryce Richardson, bassist Emani Barber, and percussionists Olivia Cirisan and Ancel Fitzgerald Neeley.
White Flowers
PC (clockwise from top left):
Marisa Klug-Morataya
Marisa Klug-Morataya
Marisa Klug Morataya
Sarah Uddin
White Flowers is a string ensemble that came out of Autophysiopsychic Millennium’s theatrical performance Something Else in the Garden, based on Dr. Yusef Lateef’s novella, Night in the Garden of Love.
Autophysiopsychic Millennium (APPM) is a Black-led creative research and performance collective that explores, experiment, and studies the music philosophy and spiritual works of world-renowned multi-instrumentalist musician, composer, author, visual artist, professor, Afro-Futurist, and Detroit native, Dr. Yusef Lateef.
White Flowers integrates musical compositions based on environmental themes and climate consciousness to initiate a cultural discourse around climate change and the importance of addressing it before it’s irreversible. These are themes discussed in Dr. Lateef’s Night in the Garden of Love, which is set on a dying Earth due to human destruction and corruption. These compositions will engage deep human emotions to connect with climate change issues through a social, political, and cultural lens. They will serve as a platform to highlight the gravity of the climate emergency.
The Regenerate! Orchestra
The Regenerate! Orchestra is a radical experiment in inclusive music-making. It seeks to reimagine the institution of the symphony orchestra with human connection, play, and community at its center. It makes music from a queer, nature-centric perspective. Each event brings together several dozen community soundmakers from across Southeast Michigan to make ambient, site-specific soundscapes and to commune with other area creatives.
Check back soon for more artist updates!
Refugia Festival 2025 Educators

Hailey Becker
Hailey Becker is an intermedia artist and researcher who blends installation art and scientific research to better understand how humans process ecological loss. Her work is highly collaborative, and she enjoys bringing seemingly unrelated people together through her projects. Becker is an MFA student in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design and a Ph.D. Candidate in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Lab in the Department of Forestry at Michigan State University.
Check back soon for more educator updates!
Nichols Arboretum
"Stage in the Arb"
Amphitheater
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Use the 1610 Washington Heights
(peony garden entrance) for the main route (includes dirt trails and steps) or Nichols Drive entrance for an ADA accessible route

