Concerts and residencies bring artists of the
highest caliber to The Walden School
Through the performance of diverse music, guest artists play an active role in helping stimulate students’ creativity. Guest performers have included members of International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Quince Ensemble, Warp Trio, Horszowski Trio, Hub New Music, Wet Ink Ensemble, PRISM Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, Dave Eggar, Peter Evans, Amadi Azikiwe, Aakash Mittal, Julia Bruskin and Aaron Wunsch, Eric Huebner, Tamsin Waley-Cohen, and Splinter Reeds.
Visiting artists are musicians and musical creators who come to Walden to perform concerts, give students feedback on their work, teach workshops, premiere student works, and participate in community events. They hail from some of the most renowned performing ensembles in the world. You can find a more complete list of Walden’s recent visiting artists here).
Each year during festival week, we invite a distinguished composer-in-residence to work with 5-week students. Walden also has its own in-house ensemble for festival week called The Walden School Players, a chamber ensemble of professional musicians who rehearse and perform students’ compositions on the Festival Week Composers Forums.
Visiting Artists at Walden’s 2024 Young Musicians Program
Sarah Kirkland Snider
Composer-in-Residence
Young Musicians Program 2024
Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times), “groundbreaking” (The Boston Globe), and “ravishingly beautiful” (NPR). Recently named one of the “Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music” by The Washington Post, Snider’s works have been commissioned and/or performed by the New York Philharmonic; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Cleveland Orchestra; San Francisco Symphony; National Symphony Orchestra; Detroit Symphony Orchestra; Philharmonia Orchestra; Birmingham Royal Ballet; Emerson String Quartet; Renée Fleming and Will Liverman; Deutsche Grammophon for mezzo Emily D’Angelo; percussionist Colin Currie; eighth blackbird; A Far Cry; and Roomful of Teeth, among many others. The winner of the 2014 Detroit Symphony Orchestra Lebenbom Competition, Snider’s recent works include Forward Into Light, an orchestral commission for the New York Philharmonic inspired by American women suffragists; Drink the Wild Ayre, the final commission for the legendary Emerson String Quartet’s farewell tour; Mass for the Endangered, a Trinity Wall Street-commissioned prayer for the environment for choir and ensemble, programmed by dozens of choirs the world over; Embrace, an orchestral ballet for the Birmingham Royal Ballet; and Hildegard, an upcoming opera on 12th c. visionary/polymath/composer St. Hildegard von Bingen commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, to premiere (venue TBA) in 2025. Her four full-length LPs – The Blue Hour (Nonesuch/New Amsterdam, 2022), Mass for the Endangered (Nonesuch/New Amsterdam, 2020), Unremembered (New Amsterdam, 2015), and Penelope (New Amsterdam, 2010) – have garnered year-end nods and critical acclaim from The New York Times, NPR, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Gramophone Magazine, Pitchfork, BBC Music Magazine, The Nation, and many others. A founding Co-Artistic Director of Brooklyn-based non-profit New Amsterdam Records, Snider has an M.M. and Artist’s Diploma from the Yale School of Music, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.
ZOFO
Opening Concert
Young Musicians Program 2024
The opening concert at Walden’s 2024 Young Musicians Program is a recital of exciting music for piano four-hands performed by Eva-Maria Zimmerman and Keisuke Nakagoshi – ZOFO.
Since joining forces as a professional duo in 2009, ZOFO has electrified audiences from Carnegie Hall to Tokyo Japan with their dazzling artistry and outside-the-box thematic programming for piano-four-hands. ZOFO, which is shorthand for 20-finger orchestra (ZO=20 and FO=finger orchestra) also performs heart-pumping duet arrangements of famous orchestral pieces such as Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” exploring the realms in which many composers first experienced their symphonic visions.
Friction Quartet
Faculty Commissioning Ensemble
Young Musicians Program 2024
Each summer, teaching faculty at The Walden School Young Musicians Program (YMP) have the opportunity to compose music for an esteemed visiting ensemble. These original works are commissioned by Walden and performed as part of the School’s Concert Series at YMP each July. It is a great opportunity for YMP students to hear music created by their Walden teachers. In 2024, the YMP Faculty Commissioning ensemble is Friction Quartet! Friction is an acclaimed Bay Area string quartet comprising violinists Otis Harriel and Kevin Rogers, violist Mitso Floor, and cellist Doug Machiz. Friction Quartet performs the masterworks of string quartet repertoire at a high level, regularly commissions and premieres new string quartet music, and seeks to enlarge the audience’s understanding of what a string quartet can be, using arrangements of pop music, digital processing, percussion, amplification, movement, and additional media.
“I’ve been absolutely blown away by all of your works, your individual voices that I’ve heard. To me you’re like a firmament of stars, which has no limit to its potential—each one unique and brilliant. I feel the world really needs you and your passion for new music, and it gives me hope that you’re going to be going out there sharing that passion.”
–Kati Agócs, Composer-in-Residence, Young Musicians Program 2019
Summer 2025
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