Seth Brenzel, Executive Director & Director, Young Musicians Program
Marguerite Ladd, Director of Operations & Development Project Manager
Esther Landau, Director of Development
Tom Lopez, Director, Computer Music Program
Caroline Mallonée, Director, Creative Musicians Retreat & Academic Dean, Young Musicians Program
Jefferson Packer, Director of Administration
Patricia Plude, Director, Teacher Training Institute
Pamela Quist, Assistant Director, Teacher Training Institute
Brendon Randall-Myers, Development Assistant & Website Administrator
Leo Wanenchak, Director, Choral Program & Academic Dean, Young Musicians Program
Seth Brenzel
Executive Director
Director, Young Musicians Program
Seth Brenzel has been associated with The Walden School for more than 25 years. He was lucky to be a student at Walden for six summers (1985-1990), and since 1994, has served the School as a staff member, faculty member, Director of Operations, and as the Associate Director from 1996 to 2003, when he became the School’s Executive Director. He has served on the boards of The Walden School, Swarthmore College, and Earplay, a San Francisco-based new music ensemble. He is a Past President of the Swarthmore College Alumni Association. Seth has also served on the Development Council for the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Seth received his B.A., with degrees in Music and Political Science, from Swarthmore College, and received an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
Prior to becoming Walden’s first full-time Executive Director in June 2007, Seth worked part-time for Walden during the year and held positions as a senior consultant at Deloitte Consulting, in marketing and public relations at the San Francisco Symphony, and most recently led both the marketing and the enterprise sales teams for the internet software company, Atomz (now part of Adobe). For 16 years, he has sung tenor with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, which in 2010 won the Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance for its recording of Mahler’s Symphony 8. He is currently one of 30 paid members of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, and as such, is a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA). In April 2011, he sang with the Sanford Dole Ensemble in San Francisco in performances of works by Robert Kyr and James MacMillan. He currently studies voice with Ruth Rainero. When not in Dublin, New Hampshire, Seth lives in San Francisco with his partner, Malcolm Gaines, and their cat Misha.
Marguerite Ladd
Director of Operations
Development Project Manager
Marguerite recently received a Master’s in Composition from New York University. She received her Bachelor of Music degree in Composition from the New England Conservatory of Music where she studied with Michael Gandolfi and John Malia, and worked closely with Lee Hyla and Malcolm Peyton. Her music has been performed by New England Conservatory’s Honors String Quartet and New England Conservatory’s Chamber Singers among many other contemporary ensembles. She currently works for PBS in Boston composing music for several different kinds of media publications that focus on education. She spent the past year studying contemporary and folk music of the British Isles and touring around Europe and the Mediterranean. She will be attending New York University Steinhardt School in the graduate program for Composition and Sound Editing.
Esther Landau
Director of Development
Esther coordinates fundraising and development efforts for The Walden School. Prior to her arrival at Walden, Esther was the Managing Director for Citywinds, a critically acclaimed new music wind quintet which commissioned and premiered more than 100 new works for winds. Esther received her B.M. in Flute Performance from the Oberlin Conservatory and her M.M. at the San Francisco Conservatory. She is a passionate advocate for new music, and has had the privilege of working directly with such composers as Luciano Berio, Elliott Carter, and Chen Yi. With more than two decades of teaching under her belt, Esther currently teaches flute lessons privately and through the San Francisco Conservatory’s Preparatory Division. Esther enjoys doing international folk dancing and in addition to the classical flute, has dabbled in playing the Irish penny whistle and the Bulgarian kaval. Esther lives in San Francisco with her spouse Caroline Pincus and their expressive daughter Ruby.
Tom Lopez
Director, Computer Music Program
Tom teaches at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music as Associate Professor of Computer Music and Digital Arts. Tom has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, the Knight Foundation, the Disney Foundation, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, and a Fulbright Fellowship as composer-in-residence at the Centre International de Recherche Musical in Nice, France. He has appeared at festivals and conferences around the world as a guest lecturer and composer. Tom is on the board of directors of the Living Music Foundation, has served on the executive committee of SCI (Society of Composers, Inc.), and was president of the Texas Computer Musicians Network. He has been a resident artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Copland House, Villa Montalvo, and Djerassi. His compositions have received critical acclaim and peer recognition; including a Grant for Young Composers from ASCAP and CD releases by Vox Novus, SCI, and SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States). His music has been performed around the world and throughout the United States including The Kennedy Center.
Caroline Mallonée
Director, Creative Musicians Retreat
Academic Dean, Young Musicians Program
Caroline has been on the faculty of The Walden School for ten summers. Carrie has written vocal, instrumental, electroacoustic, microtonal and computer music that has been performed in the United States, Mexico, Italy, England, Wales and the Netherlands. She has also written two operas and music for film. She has recently been in residence at the MacDowell Colony and at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Carrie holds degrees from Harvard University, The Yale School of Music and Duke University, and she was a Fulbright scholar to the Netherlands in 2004.
Carrie is active as a violinist: she is a member of pulsoptional, a sextet and composers’ collective based in Durham, NC, whose first album was released in April. She is also a founding member of Glissando bin Laden and his Musichideen, a quartet based in New York City that performs improvised electroacoustic microtonal music.
Jefferson Packer
Director of Administration
Jefferson joined The Walden School in Fall 2011, after completing Level I of the Teacher Training Institute. Previously, Jefferson served as Youth Orchestra Manager at the San Francisco Symphony, and Manager of Human Resources and Finance at Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.
Jefferson received his joint B.A. degree in Music and Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University, and received an M.M. in Piano Performance from San Francisco State University. In addition to being an active piano accompanist of both singers and instrumentalists, he has sung with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, and is currently a member of the American Bach Choir and the baritone soloist at St. Thomas Anglican Church in San Francisco. Jefferson lives in San Francisco with his partner, Marcel Gemperli, a professional violist, and Clarisse, their Pleyel piano.
Patricia Plude
Director, Teacher Training Institute
Patricia is grateful to have been a member of The Walden School community for more than 30 years. Serving in roles that have ranged from “junior faculty” to Executive Director, Pat is honored to direct The Walden School Teacher Training Institute, through which the school’s innovative and proven methods are being made available to a broader community of music educators.
Pat holds advanced degrees in piano performance from The Peabody Institute and the San Francisco Conservatory and has dedicated her career to promoting and performing new music, as well as teaching musicianship and improvisation. She has performed with the San Francisco Contemporary Players, Earplay, and Alternate Currents, all Bay Area new music ensembles, and is a former member of the dynamic San Francisco performing group, Wing It!, an ensemble dedicated to mounting fully improvised performances combining dance, storytelling, and music. Pat is certified to teach InterPlay®, a philosophy and practice of improvisation based in creativity, community, and change. In addition, Pat has served as a faculty member of the San Francisco Conservatory Preparatory Department and Chair of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Composer Commissioning Program. She has lectured at state and national music conferences on topics such as “Releasing the Music Within” and has published articles that advocate learning music through the active process of its creation. Currently Pat is a member of the faculty at Santa Clara University, in Santa Clara, California, where she has designed and implemented an innovative aural skills curriculum for the music department. Pat also serves as the Minister of Worship Arts for First Mennonite Church of San Francisco.
Pamela Quist
Assistant Director, Teacher Training Institute
Pam is a composer and has taught composition, piano and music theory for 35 years. A founder and former Director of The Walden School, Pamela was also on its Board of Directors and is a contributing author to The Walden School Musicianship Course: A Manual for Teachers. Pamela Quist joined the music faculty at Santa Clara University in 2001 where she teaches music composition and the upper division theory courses such as counterpoint, form and analysis, and orchestration. In addition, she teaches Performance and Culture, the history of Western civilization from the viewpoint of the performing arts–theatre, dance and music. Pamela is a graduate of The Peabody Institute with a degree in piano performance and a doctorate in music composition. Her dissertation exploring the music of Earle Brown is entitled Indeterminate Form in the Work of Earle Brown. During the period from 1976 to 2000, Pamela was a faculty member at various institutions including SUNY Geneseo, Peabody Conservatory, Essex Community College, and the Johns Hopkins University Continuing Studies program.
As a composer, Pamela has written for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal combinations including chamber ensembles, orchestra, solo instrumental, solo piano, vocal and choral music. Her most recent work, Requiem for the People, for mixed choir and orchestra, received its American premiere in June 2006 and was then performed by the Santa Clara Chorale and University Choirs in Prague and Vienna to critical acclaim. Pamela Quist’s current composing project is Praha Concerto, a piano concerto for pianist Teresa McCollough.
Brendon Randall-Myers
Development Assistant
Website Administrator
Brendon is a San-Francisco-based guitarist, composer and improvisor whose music deals with community, strange interactions and inevitable change, often through juxtapositions and amalgamations of music for bars and music for concert halls. He has been commissioned by Sqwonk, The Living Earth Show, Nonsemble 6, the Mobius Trio, guitarist Jon Mendle, and flutist Esther Landau. His music has also been performed by the Aeros Wind Quintet, the Claremont Guitar Ensemble, pianist Guy Livingston, and flutist Teresa Beaman, and his work has received support from the American Composers Forum. For the last two years, Brendon has performed as an electric guitarist with Grains, a group that blurs the lines between concert music, math rock, and improvised noise music. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Pomona College with a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in music, where he was the two-time recipient of The Gordan A. Hogan Memorial Prize in Music. His primary guitar teachers have been Bob Squires and Jack Sanders, and his composition teachers have been Tom Flaherty, Kurt Rohde and Belinda Reynolds.
Leo Wanenchak
Director, Choral Program
Academic Dean, Young Musicians Program
Leo has been associated with The Walden School for 31 years and is a contributing author to The Walden School Musicianship Course: A Manual for Teachers. Leo currently serves as the Assistant Conductor of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society and is on the faculty of the Preparatory Department of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. He is also the Director of the Larks, a women’s vocal ensemble, a community service project of the Junior League of Baltimore. Twice being honored A National Foundation for Advancement of the Arts Outstanding Educator, his students have awards from NFAA, MTNA and ASCAP.
As a conductor, keyboard artist, vocalist and narrator, he has performed throughout the USA, including Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, The Academy of Music in Philadelphia, Saint Thomas Church, Riverside Church and Carnegie Hall in New York City and abroad in France, Greece, Holland and Romania. He has been heard on NPR locally with Choral Arts Classics, Backstage at the BSO, Face the Music and featured nationally on Pipe Dreams. Leo is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory and is a member of the American Guild of Organists, the American Choral Directors Association, Music Teacher’s National Association and Chorus America. Leo’s music is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
Past Administration
Anne Deane Berman
Stephen Coxe
Kate Davis
Lindsay Edwards
Audrey Enriquez
Bradley Evans
Malcolm Gaines
Tanja Shipman Gubser
Thomson Guster
Lynn Taylor Hebden
Morgen Jahnke
Deborah Katz
Amelia Lukas
Laura Mehiel
Andrew Thams
Randy Thomas
