Our talented team
who loves music
In addition to their many talents, the faculty and staff of the Walden School are trained in performance, composition, conducting, theory and pedagogy.
YEAR-ROUND ADMINISTRATION
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Caroline Mallonee
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Christopher Martin
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Mindy Williams
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Noah Mlotek
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Sammi Stone
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Seth Brenzel
Caroline Mallonee
Director, Creative Musicians Retreat
American composer Caroline Mallonee finds inspiration in visual art, science, languages, and musical puzzles. Her music has been programmed across the United States including at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Merkin Hall, Bargemusic, and National Sawdust, as well as further afield at the Long Leaf Opera Festival (NC), Carlsbad Music Festival (CA), Bennington Chamber Music Conference (VT), Jordan Hall (Boston, MA), Cambridge Music Festival (UK), and Tokyo Opera City (Japan). Mallonee has been commissioned to write new works for the New York Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Spektral Quartet, Firebird Ensemble, Present Music, Wet Ink Ensemble, Antares, PRISM Quartet, Ciompi Quartet, Ethos Percussion, and the Buffalo Chamber Players, for whom she serves as composer-in-residence. Carrie has been on the faculty of The Walden School since 1998 and is the director of the Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat. She first came to Walden as a student when she was 12 and has hiked Mt. Monadnock more than thirty times. She holds degrees from Harvard, Yale and Duke, and held a Fulbright Fellowship to the Netherlands, where she studied with Louis Andriessen. For more information, please visit www.carolinemallonee.com.
Christopher Martin
Development Assistant
Christopher Martin is a conductor, baritone, and composer based in San Francisco. In addition to his role at The Walden School, Chris teaches at the San Francisco Girls Chorus and at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in the Vocal and Musical Theatre Departments. Chris can be heard singing with a variety of choral ensembles throughout the Bay Area, including Volti, the schola cantorum of the Cathedral of Christ the Light, and Nebula Consort. As a composer, Chris has had recent commissions from Sing Me a Story, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and looks forward to an upcoming premiere by Vallejo Choral Society in May 2026. Outside of music, he is proud to volunteer with the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program, in support of youth in the foster care system.
Mindy Williams
Administrative Manager
Mindy comes to The Walden School with over 20 years of experience in both the private and public sectors. She has worked in a variety of roles including sales, marketing, operations and training and development. Mindy was most recently an organizational consultant at the University of California Office of the President. In that capacity, she supported the Chief Information Officer and the leadership team and helped improve efficiencies within the organization. In her free time, Mindy enjoys traveling, playing tennis and spending time with her husband and two teenage boys.
Noah Mlotek
Director of Development and Alumni Relations
Noah Mlotek has been associated with The Walden School for 20 years, first as a student at the Young Musicians Program, then as a summer staff member, and now as a full-time member of Walden’s administrative staff. Noah worked for several years in the publishing industry and holds degrees from Oberlin College and Stanford University. He sings professionally at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco.
Sammi Stone
Director of Operations
Faculty, Young Musicians Program
Sammi Jo Stone is an arts administrator and performer on oboe, English horn, saxophones, and other woodwinds. She lives in Norwich, Connecticut, and is originally from Baker City in rural northeastern Oregon. She studied music at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the University of California San Diego, and has performed with Long Beach Opera, Berkshire Symphony Orchestra, Grande Ronde Symphony Orchestra, La Jolla Symphony, and Willimantic Symphony Orchestra. Sammi discovered Walden as a Creative Musicians Retreat participant in 2017. This is her sixth summer working as Director of Operations.
Seth Brenzel
Executive Director & Director, Young Musicians Program
Seth Brenzel, Executive Director, has been associated with The Walden School for nearly 40 years. He was fortunate to be a student at Walden for six magical summers (1985-1990), and since 1994, has served the School as a staff member, faculty member, board member, Director of Operations, and as the Associate Director from 1996 to 2003, when he became Walden’s Executive Director. Since 1995, he has sung tenor with the Grammy Award-winning San Francisco Symphony Chorus, and is currently a professional (AGMA) member of that ensemble.
In 2023, Seth was appointed by Mayor London Breed to serve on the San Francisco Arts Commission. Seth chairs the board of the PRISM Quartet and serves on the boards of Ensemble Dal Niente and of the San Francisco Friends School, a board he has previously co-clerked. He has also served on the boards of Swarthmore College and Earplay. Seth received his B.A., with degrees in Music and Political Science, from Swarthmore College, where he served as President of the College’s Alumni Association. He received an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, with a focus in non-profit management and marketing. He is a graduate of Leadership San Francisco, where he serves as an alumni advisor.
Prior to becoming Walden’s first full-time Executive Director, 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 led both the marketing and the enterprise sales teams for an internet software company, now part of Adobe. When not at Walden, Seth lives in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco with his husband, Malcolm Gaines, and their daughter, Cora.
SUMMER FACULTY & STAFF
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Aidan Gold
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Brian Fancher
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Camara Kambon
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Cara Haxo
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Caroline Mallonee
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D. J. Sparr
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Dahlia Riddington
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Emi Ostrom
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Francesca Hellerman
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Hannah Rice
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Josíah Garza
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Justice Nious
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Kari Francis
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Loretta Notareschi
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Lu Caudle
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Lukáš Janata
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Luke Schroeder
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Michael Ballard
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Nate Trier
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Osnat Netzer
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Paul Zito
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Renée Favand-See
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Rodier
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Sammi Stone
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Sarah Riskind
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Seth Brenzel
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Sophia Thompson
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Stephen David Beck
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Theo Trevisan
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Veronica Kao
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Zach Amdur
Aidan Gold
Faculty, Young Musicians Program
Aidan Gold is a composer, conductor, percussionist, and educator. His work often focuses on musical games, improvisation, theatricality, and narrative/storytelling. He is fascinated with the idea of music as a social act – a game/ritual that we perform to allow us to communicate and connect with one another, defining, challenging, and expanding our individual and collective identities.
Gold is currently pursuing a DMA in Composition at the Juilliard School. He has a MM in Composition from USC, and a BM in Composition and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Washington. Gold’s composition mentors include Andrew Norman, Nina Young, Frank Ticheli, and Huck Hodge. His music has been performed by the Seattle Symphony, the Juilliard Orchestra, the JACK Quartet, and others, and has won awards including the Arthur Friedman and Palmer Dixon prizes.
Gold is also a conductor and is passionate about working closely with performers to innovate methods of performance and connections between musicians. He was the assistant music director of the USC Student Symphony Orchestra from 2020-2021. Gold is also one of the founding members of AFK, a NYC contemporary chamber music collective that focuses on interactive musical experiences. His other interests include origami and hiking.
Brian Fancher
Assistant Director of Operations & Assistant Choral Director, Young Musicians Program
Camara Kambon
Faculty, Young Musicians Program 2025
Camara Kambon is an Emmy Award-winning composer who has written for a diverse range of films, TV shows, and recording artists. His work includes the Oscar-nominated La Corona, Any Given Sunday, Biker Boyz, and the theme for the CW Network’s Girlfriends. He recently composed the score for Acts of Reparation (currently on the festival circuit), and his work was featured in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Thor: Love and Thunder, and the upcoming Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, starring Mahershali Ali. He has collaborated with Dizzy Gillespie, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Cara Haxo
Faculty, Creative Musicians Retreat
Academic Dean, Young Musicians Program
At the encouragement of her mother, Cara Haxo begrudgingly attended Walden as a student in 2004. As soon as she arrived on campus, she immediately fell in love with everything about Walden and came back for another five summers. She is thrilled to return to Walden more recently as a faculty member and academic dean. Cara is the winner of the 2022 National Women’s Musical Festival Emerging Women Composers Competition. She was also awarded the 2019 International Alliance for Women in Music Libby Larsen Prize, the 2013 National Federation of Music Clubs Young Composers Award, and the 2013 IAWM Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prize. Her works have been premiered by the May Festival Youth Chorus, Hub New Music, Quince Ensemble, and Splinter Reeds, amongst other ensembles.
Cara is a Visiting Assistant Professor at The College of Wooster in Ohio. She earned her Ph.D. in Composition at the University of Oregon, where she worked as a Graduate Teaching Fellow in Music Theory. She also holds degrees from Butler University and The College of Wooster. She previously taught courses in composition and theory as an Adjunct Instructor of Music at Notre Dame College (Ohio), and private piano, theory, and composition lessons through the Butler Community Arts School in Indianapolis. When she is not composing, Cara enjoys baking desserts, going on long road trips, and hanging out with her cat, Pippin. For more information, please visit http://chaxomusic.com.
Caroline Mallonee
Director, Creative Musicians Retreat
American composer Caroline Mallonee finds inspiration in visual art, science, languages, and musical puzzles. Her music has been programmed across the United States including at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Merkin Hall, Bargemusic, and National Sawdust, as well as further afield at the Long Leaf Opera Festival (NC), Carlsbad Music Festival (CA), Bennington Chamber Music Conference (VT), Jordan Hall (Boston, MA), Cambridge Music Festival (UK), and Tokyo Opera City (Japan). Mallonee has been commissioned to write new works for the New York Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Spektral Quartet, Firebird Ensemble, Present Music, Wet Ink Ensemble, Antares, PRISM Quartet, Ciompi Quartet, Ethos Percussion, and the Buffalo Chamber Players, for whom she serves as composer-in-residence. Carrie has been on the faculty of The Walden School since 1998 and is the director of the Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat. She first came to Walden as a student when she was 12 and has hiked Mt. Monadnock more than thirty times. She holds degrees from Harvard, Yale and Duke, and held a Fulbright Fellowship to the Netherlands, where she studied with Louis Andriessen. For more information, please visit www.carolinemallonee.com.
D. J. Sparr
Faculty, Creative Musicians Retreat
Composer and electric guitarist D. J. Sparr, who Gramophone hailed as “exemplary,” is one of America’s preeminent composer-performers. He has caught the attention of critics with his eclectic style, described as “pop-Romantic…iridescent and wondrous” (The Mercury News) and “suits the boundary erasing spirit of today’s new-music world” (The New York Times). In addition, the Los Angeles Times praises him as “an excellent soloist,” and the Santa Cruz Sentinel says that he “wowed an enthusiastic audience…Sparr‘s guitar sang in a near-human voice.”
He was the electric guitar concerto soloist on the 2018 GRAMMY-Award-winning recording with JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra. He has performed electric guitar concertos as soloist with more than twenty orchestras on two continents across a fifteen-year career. He has composed for and performed with renowned ensembles such as the Houston Grand Opera, Cabrillo Festival, New World Symphony, Washington National Opera, and Eighth Blackbird. D. J. was the Young American Composer-in-Residence with the California Symphony from 2011-2014. His music has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, and the League of Composers/ISCM. Sparr is a faculty member at The Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat in Dublin, New Hampshire. His composition works and guitar performances appear on Naxos, Innova Recordings, Albany, Centaur Records, and Neuma Records. Sparr was named one of NPR Music’s favorite 100 composers.
A passion for musical performance grew from family encouragement at a young age. Three-year-old D. J. mimicked playing the guitar by holding his great-grandmother Violet Bond’s straw broom in hand. Noticing this, Violet gave him a toy guitar for his third birthday and a Ukulele for his fourth birthday. By age five, D. J. was taking guitar lessons and was soon performing at his local music store, Coffey Music, in Westminster, MD.
In high school, D. J. spent his late-night and weekend hours writing and recording music with a Fostex X-26 4-track recorder. He attended Baltimore School for the Arts as a jazz guitar major. Surrounded by classical music, he began to write compositions for various instruments. A proud alumnus of The Walden School’s Young Musicians Program, D. J. continued honing his compositional craft at the Eastman School of Music (BM) and the University of Michigan (MM, DMA) studying with composers William Bolcom, Michael Daugherty, Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, & Augusta Read Thomas.
D. J. lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with his wife Kimberly, son Harris, and Bundini the boxer. He teaches music composition at LSU’s Ogden Honors College.
Dahlia Riddington
Staff, Creative Musicians Retreat
Emi Ostrom
Faculty, Young Musicians Program
Emi Ostrom (they/she) is a Brooklyn-based oboist, singer and composer fascinated by paradoxes: historicity in contemporary music, spiritual atheism and the surprising humanity of algorithms. Their work deals with the merging of new and old, and the places where distinctions dissolve.
Emi has performed on four continents, and spent several years living abroad in Japan and England. Her oboe playing was once said to “melt our hearts” (New Zealand Herald). She has performed with renowned period-instrument orchestras including Juilliard415, Les Arts Florissants, Philharmonia Baroque, The American Classical Orchestra, Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity, Yale Camerata and Upper Valley Baroque. As a singer, she holds a mezzo-soprano position at St James Church and has collaborated with many choirs including Medieval Women’s Choir, Emerald Ensemble, Mägi Ensemble, Vox Anima, and St James Cathedral Cantorei.
Emi can be heard performing the English horn solo on “The Sneetches” album with Oberlin Orchestra, and oboe on prog rock album “The Return” by Deep Energy Orchestra. She has sung the National Anthem at a Mariners game, played with funk bassist Evan Flory-Barnes, and performed in a Classical wind quintet for GEMS Midtown Concerts. With Juilliard415 she performed regularly at Lincoln Center, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, Music Before 1800, and on a national broadcast by Early Music America. Emi embraces the joy of composing-performing. Her compositions have been performed by Juilliard Double Visions, Hub New Music, Corvid Ensemble, Deixis Ensemble, Les Chanterelles, and Warp Trio, and her own recitals at Oberlin and Juilliard.
As an educator, she is on faculty at the Walden School, teaching courses in musicianship and composition. She has worked at Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program as oboe fellow, lecturer and teaching assistant; tutored music theory for Juilliard Extension, and coached oboe students for the Seattle Youth Symphony. Emi holds bachelor’s degrees in neuroscience and oboe performance from Oberlin, a master’s in vocal performance from University of York and a master’s in historical performance from Juilliard. In her spare time Emi enjoys collecting instruments. Her growing family includes a newly restored 19th-century oboe and English horn, 2-key baroque oboes and a baroque oboe d’amore, an 8-key Classical oboe, a modern oboe, a baroque alto recorder, and a 3D-printed Renaissance cornetto. She hand-makes all of her reeds and usually keeps at least four types of oboe reeds on hand.
Francesca Hellerman
Staff, Creative Musicians Retreat
Faculty, Young Musicians Program
Hannah Rice
Composer/soprano Hannah Rice is drawn to extremes. Her music often features hyperfeminine vocalizations, playful theatrics, and cathartic screams to create humorous and vulnerable works.
Hannah’s music has been performed at notable venues, including Carnegie Hall, Cadogan Hall London, and New Music on the Point. In 2024, Hannah attended the Aspen Music Festival as a Composition Fellow, where she was awarded the Hermitage Prize in Composition. She has received commissions from organizations such as Piano Spheres, Vox Anima London, and the Cincinnati Song Initiative.
Not only is Hannah a composer but she is also an active performer of opera and new music. Her recent roles include the Soprano Soloist in Kaija Saariaho’s La Passion de Simone and Controller in Flight. She performs professionally throughout Los Angeles with organizations such as Opera Buffs, St. James in the City, and Exilio Ensemble.
Hannah is also a passionate music educator, currently teaching private voice at Citrus College and in her own private studio. She is a Vocal Coach for the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus and a Teaching Artist for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. She holds Master of Music degrees in both Composition and Vocal Arts & Opera from USC’s Thornton School of Music.
Josíah Garza
Josíah Garza is an interdisciplinary artist hailing from the Mexican American border of South Texas. As a composer, educator, and storyteller his work roots itself in communication and collaboration with oppressed communities. He was raised in the arts, and his childhood studying percussion, visual art, contemporary dance, and traditional Mexican ballet folklorico evolved his practice into a dialogue across artistic mediums. Whether through music-theatre, living-art-installation, or spoken-word performance, his work is an extension of the stories he seeks to tell and the hazy moments he aims to piece together in a concept of survival known as pachada.
Josíah is currently a Pathways to DMA Fellow of the Peabody Institute set to earn his doctorate in music composition under the direction of Sky Macklay. As a Pathways Fellow, he works as a citizen-artist between the academy and society, and has become a Presser Graduate Music Awardee to found and direct the interdisciplinary arts collective, Wieldflower Arts. Previously, he earned a BA in Music from the Butler School of Music and a BSA in Biology from UT Austin.
Josíah is honored to be joining the faculty of The Walden School’s Young Musicians Program in the summer of 2026 inspiring the future of creative musicians.
Justice Nious
Justice C. Nious is a composer and sound designer based in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is currently pursuing his Bachelor of Music degree in Music for New Media: Film and Game Scoring at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. His work has been performed by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble and members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and he has collaborated on several projects with film students from the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Johns Hopkins Film Department. His passion for storytelling through music is at the core of everything he creates, and he’s excited to see where his musical journey takes him.
Kari Francis
Choral Director, Young Musicians Program
Dr. Kari Francis is an American choral musician whose work explores the resonant spaces between improvisation, ritual, and canonical styles. She can be heard singing with the NYC-based Choral Chameleon and beatboxing on Season 3 of NBC’s The Sing-Off with Kinfolk 9 and on GRAMMY-winner Cory Smythe’s album Accelerate Every Voice. Her approach to teaching and concertizing centers living and historically underrepresented voices as part of equitable, creative, and learner-centered pedagogies, while her composing merges elements of psalmody, vocal jazz, renaissance polyphony, and contemporary a cappella. She has written chapters for books published by GIA Music and the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), and maintains an active schedule as a guest conductor and clinician. Kari is the Director of Choral Activities at Bowdoin College and the choir director of The Walden School Young Musicians Program. She holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Teachers College Columbia University, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Notre Dame. Her doctoral thesis, “Not An Object But Motion: Choral Improvisation Through Vocal Painting,” offers techniques for conductors to foster individual and collective artistic agency in choral ensembles while expanding concert programming to include collaboratively realized works.
Loretta Notareschi
Faculty, Creative Musicians Retreat
Lu Caudle
Lukáš Janata
Faculty, Young Musicians Program
Lukáš, a Czech San Francisco-based artist, explores empathy in various forms, serving as a composer, educator, performer, and organizer. As a board director at The Resonance Project, he explores music’s role in conflict transformation through neuroscience. He co-organized the Ukraine-benefit Concert of Compassion and the ECHOES concert series for empathy in Prague. He instructs at The Walden School and the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music. He received artist residencies and fellowships at the Wurlitzer Foundation, KHN Center, ISCM’s VICC, VCCA, Casa Uno, Millay Arts, Jentel, and Aspen Music Festival. Lukáš received commissions from San Francisco Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, Janáček Philharmonic, Orchestra of St Luke’s, Cantori New York, and others. For more info, please visit: lukasjanata.cz
Luke Schroeder
Faculty & Staff, Young Musicians Program
Luke was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, and currently lives in Austin, Texas. He graduated from Texas Tech University, where he received a BM in Music Education, in 2023. At Texas Tech, Luke played Viola in the University Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Bravura, and New Music Ensemble and sang with the Texas Tech Matador Singers. He has played with the Wichita Falls Youth Symphony Orchestra and Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra as well. Luke worked for the Texas Tech String Project throughout college. String Project is an organization funded by Texas Tech University that allows string music education students to teach beginner string players. Luke now works as a middle school Orchestra & Guitar teacher at Webb Middle School in Austin, Texas. He has been working for Walden since 2019, where he has worked as a staff member, teacher, conductor, and Assistant Director of Operations. Luke is looking forward to a fun and exciting summer at Walden!
Michael Ballard
Michael Ballard is an enthusiastic and passionate conductor and educator serving as an Assistant Professor of Music and the Director of Choral Activities at Regis University. In this role, he conducts the Collegium Musicum and the University Choir, teaches Introduction to Singing, Social Justice in Music, and serves as the Voice Area Coordinator. Before joining Regis University, Michael directed several community and church choirs, sang in professional choirs, and taught in the K-12 school system. In the classroom, he advocates a holistic approach to music-making to foster well-rounded musicianship. He strongly believes in empowering young musicians through musical literacy and employs active learning and applied engagement strategies. His scholarly interests include analyzing and demystifying post-tonal choral music by composers such as Herbert Howells. He is also interested in using solfège as an analytical tool to enhance music theory skills in choral rehearsals. Michael holds degrees from MSU Denver, the University of Denver Lamont School of Music, and the University of South Carolina, where he studied Music Education, Music Composition, Conducting, and Music Theory Pedagogy.
Nate Trier
Faculty & Academic Dean, Young Musicians Program
Nate Trier is a composer and producer, based in Hartford, CT, who creates electronic music that features lyrical piano and accordion melodies over churning soundscapes of buzzing drones, fuzzy drums, and crackling static. He describes his music as “classical ambient beats;” others have described it as “engrossing” (KFFP) and “like looking into your soul” (Raighes Factory). His music has travelled worldwide: visual artist Sergei Petrov used Trier’s music for installations in Zelenograd, Russia, and the 48th International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany distributed a recording of Trier’s fixed-media piece, “Serial Parameter Shift,” to attendees. Trier has released several collections of electronic music, including singles, EP’s, and albums.
Osnat Netzer
Faculty, Creative Musicians Retreat
Israel native Osnat Netzer is a composer, performer, and educator. Inspired by performers’ bodies, personalities, and their relationship to their instruments, Osnat creates her compositions collaboratively, tailoring her work to the performer’s sensibilities, physicality and improvisational inclinations. Drawing from cognitive linguistics and the embodied experience of physical forces—such as potential and kinetic energy—her works are rich in musical languages and connected to the fulsome pursuit of tension and relaxation.
Netzer’s works have been commissioned and performed by Del Sol Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, ~Nois, International Contemporary Ensemble, Patchwork, mezzo-soprano Lucy Dhegrae, bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward, saxophonists Kenneth Radnofsky, Doug O’Connor and Geoffrey Landman, Spektral Quartet, and Winsor Music, among many others.
Her works are published by Edition Peters and earthsongs, and recorded on Bridge Records and New Focus Recordings.
Her opera, The Wondrous Woman Within, was described as “riotously funny” in The New York Times when its first scene was performed at New York City Opera’s VOX festival in 2012 and “challenging and fascinating” by critic Amir Kidron when it received its world premiere in a sold-out run at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theatre in 2015.
As a pianist and performer, she regularly plays and conducts new music by fellow composers, as well as her own songs and compositions. Also a committed and passionate educator, Netzer teaches at The Walden School and has served on the faculties of New England Conservatory, Longy School of Music of Bard College and Harvard University, and as of 2023 is Associate Professor of Composition and Musicianship at DePaul University in Chicago, IL.
Paul Zito
Young Musicians Program staff
Renée Favand-See
Faculty, Creative Musicians Retreat
Renée Favand-See is a composer and soprano living in Portland, Oregon. Her works explore the music of words, natural and made environments, emotions and spiritual questions—especially delving into grief as a vehicle for individual and communal transformation. These investigations yield vocal music of all stripes, Musique Concrète-esque electronic pieces, and lyrically driven instrumental music cultivating relationships that unfold in the spaces between voices.
Recent performances include a choral arrangement of We Need Earth premiered by Resonance Ensemble, and an arrangement of esperanza spalding’s City of Roses, commissioned by Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble. Significant projects include: First Flight and We Need Earth for Trio Triumphatrix and Voices of Ascension’s NYC production Astronautica; Ten full moons for Northwest Art Song; Only in falling for Resonance Ensemble; Suffer silently for fixed electronic media; Wie der Katz mit der Maus for fEARnoMUSIC; and Growing for Portland Piano International. Among her other commissions are works for Five Boroughs Music Festival, Lucy Shelton and Eighth Blackbird, Sequitur, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, American Opera Projects, Wet Ink Ensemble, and Outer Voices Festival. Other groups who have performed her music include: members of ICE; David Friend; The Julians; Friends of Rain; Electrogals; Del Sol String Quartet; Peabody Trio; and many singers, including Hai-Ting Chinn, Arwen Myers, Laura Beckel-Thoreson, Jesse Blumberg, Blythe Gaissert, Hannah Penn, Alissa Rose, and William Ferguson.
Renée has written chamber, orchestral, choral and electronic pieces, as well as music for video and dance, including collaborations with Ten Tiny Dances in Portland, TRIP Dance Theatre in Los Angeles, Group Motion in Philadelphia and video artist Christine Sciulli in New York City. Renée has also ventured into theater, with long-time friend and collaborator, Hai-Ting Chinn, with Science Fair, a staged vocal recital produced by HERE Arts Center in New York City.
She holds B.M. and M.M. degrees in composition from the Eastman and Yale Schools of Music, respectively. Her earliest compositional studies began at age twelve with The Walden School, a summer program for young musicians in Dublin, New Hampshire.
Renée currently teaches music composition and theory at Portland State University and at Walden’s Creative Musicians Retreat (CMR) in New England.
Rodier
Technical Director, Young Musicians Program & Creative Musicians Retreat 2025
Rodier is a composer living and working in New York City. His work is often collaborative and has appeared in a range of venues from galleries, to concert halls, to film festivals. The most recent work has been focused on producing contemporary music, film, and works for the stage across many different disciplines and genres. He has a passion for education, film making, public transportation, and he holds a master’s degree in Music Composition from New York University.
Sammi Stone
Director of Operations
Faculty, Young Musicians Program
Sammi Jo Stone is an arts administrator and performer on oboe, English horn, saxophones, and other woodwinds. She lives in Norwich, Connecticut, and is originally from Baker City in rural northeastern Oregon. She studied music at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the University of California San Diego, and has performed with Long Beach Opera, Berkshire Symphony Orchestra, Grande Ronde Symphony Orchestra, La Jolla Symphony, and Willimantic Symphony Orchestra. Sammi discovered Walden as a Creative Musicians Retreat participant in 2017. This is her sixth summer working as Director of Operations.
Sarah Riskind
Choral Director, Creative Musicians Retreat 2024
Originally from the Boston area, conductor and composer Sarah Riskind is the Music Director of the Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana and the Director of Choral Activities/Assistant Professor of Music at Eureka College in central Illinois. She leads the Eureka College Chorale, Chamber Singers, and instrumental Chamber Ensemble, as well as teaching courses in composition, improvisation, musicianship, and conducting. In 2023, she received the T. A. Abbott Award for Faculty Excellence from the Higher Education and Leadership Ministries of the Disciples of Christ, with which Eureka College is one of fifteen associated institutions.
Sarah has been at Walden since 2011, including many summers as the choral director at The Young Musicians Program. This will be her second summer as the choral director at the Creative Musicians Retreat. At Walden, Sarah has written chamber music for the Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Hub New Music, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and Ensemble Dal Niente as part of the Walden School Faculty Commissioning Project. Many of her other works are choral settings of Jewish texts, such as Psalm of the Sky for TBB chorus, violin, and piano, which was premiered in 2020 as part of the Creative Commissions Project at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Her compositions are available on her website and J. W. Pepper and featured in the contemporary choral music catalogue Project Encore.
As a presenter and clinician, Riskind specializes in Renaissance polyphony, Sephardic and other Jewish music, musicianship training, and choral improvisation. In a 2021 Walden Online Workshop entitled Chromaticism in Renaissance Music: What living musicians can learn from Gesualdo and friends, she discussed wide-ranging uses of musica ficta and guided the multi-generational participants in composing with similar techniques. In 2022-2023, her grant-funded workshops with Eureka College colleague Dr. Adriana Martínez provided Illinois teachers with repertoire ideas and teaching techniques on Jewish choral music and choral improvisation.
In addition to choral conducting, composition, and singing early music, Sarah Riskind is a fiddler and vocalist in the Peoria-based traditional Irish band Turas. She holds a DMA in Choral Conducting from University of Washington, an MM in Choral Conducting from University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a BA in Music from Williams College. www.sarahriskind.com
Seth Brenzel
Executive Director & Director, Young Musicians Program
Seth Brenzel, Executive Director, has been associated with The Walden School for nearly 40 years. He was fortunate to be a student at Walden for six magical summers (1985-1990), and since 1994, has served the School as a staff member, faculty member, board member, Director of Operations, and as the Associate Director from 1996 to 2003, when he became Walden’s Executive Director. Since 1995, he has sung tenor with the Grammy Award-winning San Francisco Symphony Chorus, and is currently a professional (AGMA) member of that ensemble.
In 2023, Seth was appointed by Mayor London Breed to serve on the San Francisco Arts Commission. Seth chairs the board of the PRISM Quartet and serves on the boards of Ensemble Dal Niente and of the San Francisco Friends School, a board he has previously co-clerked. He has also served on the boards of Swarthmore College and Earplay. Seth received his B.A., with degrees in Music and Political Science, from Swarthmore College, where he served as President of the College’s Alumni Association. He received an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, with a focus in non-profit management and marketing. He is a graduate of Leadership San Francisco, where he serves as an alumni advisor.
Prior to becoming Walden’s first full-time Executive Director, 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 led both the marketing and the enterprise sales teams for an internet software company, now part of Adobe. When not at Walden, Seth lives in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco with his husband, Malcolm Gaines, and their daughter, Cora.
Sophia Thompson
Sophia Thompson, soprano, is currently pursuing her Bachelor of Music degree in Choral Music at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. A flexible choral artist, she regularly performs with the USC Chamber Singers and the USC Choral Collective. She also serves as the soprano section leader and assistant conductor for the USC Oriana Treble Choir. In addition to her work as a vocalist and conductor, Sophia teaches choral music in Los Angeles public schools through the Thornton Community Engagement Program.
Sophia’s artistic work spans many genres. In addition to her classical training, she fuels her love for contemporary music through singing with and music directing the USC Troy Tones. She regularly writes pop and jazz a cappella arrangements for the group.
Sophia has represented USC and CSArts in the Los Angeles Community performing at Walt Disney Concert Hall (Noon to Midnight, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with the USC Thornton Symphony), Descanso Gardens (Enchanted Forest of Light), the Music Center (64th Annual L.A. County Holiday Celebration on PBS), and Pasadena Art Night.
Sophia has also sung with several church choirs, including Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Altadena, Church of the Good Shepherd in Arcadia, and Westwood United Methodist Church.
Stephen David Beck
Stephen David Beck composes electroacoustic, fixed media, and acoustic music for a wide range of ensembles, theatre, and media. He studied music composition at the University of California, Los Angeles, where his principal teachers were Henri Lazarof, Elaine Barkin, Paul Reale, Alden Ashforth, and Roger Bourland. In 1985, he studied computer music at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) with the support of an Annette Kade/Fulbright Fellowship, where he worked with Xavier Rodet and Jean-Baptiste Barrière. After receiving his PhD in 1988, he joined the faculty of Louisiana State University where he is currently the Haymon Professor of Composition and Computer Music. Since 2003, he has held a joint appointment at the Center for Computation & Technology, where he established the Cultural Computing research group and led the development of the PhD program in Experimental Music & Digital Media (EMDM).
His music has been performed throughout the world, including performances at Weill Recital Hall, Concert Band Directors National Association Biennial, North American Saxophone Alliance, World Saxophone Congress, New Music America, and World Harp Congress. His writings have been published by G. Shirmer, MIT Press, Springer Nature, the Acoustical Society of America and the Computer Music Journal, and his music has been recorded on the SEAMUS, EMF, and Gothic record labels. His work “Wild Rumpus” was the winner of the G. Schirmer prize for young composers in 1999.
About his music, Beck writes:
“…the use of technology in my music is not meant to replace musicians, but rather to enhance and expand a performer’s potential for expressiveness, technique and, most importantly, timbre. There is an uncanny beauty in the physical and mathematical laws of nature, a beauty of intense complexity bound by simplicity, order and logic. For me, this is a constant and powerful source of inspiration, and the use of modern technology seems the perfect tool for expressing that inspiration and awe.”
Theo Trevisan
Faculty, Young Musicians Program
Theo Trevisan (b. 1999) is a Los Angeles-based composer, bass-baritone, and conductor from New Jersey. His music balances intensity and whimsy as it puts idiosyncratic spins on unlikely combinations of old and new influences.
Theo’s music has been performed by many collaborators, including the International Contemporary Ensemble, TAK Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, Talujon, Friction Quartet, Antioch Chamber Ensemble, HEX Vocal Ensemble, DJ Sparr, David Friend, and Soo Yeon Lyuh. He has sung with the choir of St. James in-the-City LA, Tonality, Choral Arts Initiative, and Gallicantus, among others. Additionally, he is an original member of Exilio, a vocal octet dedicated to programming new music and underrepresented composers. His music was recently programmed at Hear Now Festival in Los Angeles and Penn State’s New Music Symposium.
As a child, Theo sang at the American Boychoir School, performing in 30 states and South Korea with world-class conductors and ensembles. Theo holds a B.A. from Princeton and an M.M. in Composition from USC. His composition mentors include Ted Hearne, Andrew Norman, Donald Crockett, Jeff Snyder, Dan Trueman, Donnacha Dennehy, and Dmitri Tymozcko. He has studied voice with Reid Bruton and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek; and conducting with Gabriel Crouch and Tram Sparks.
Veronica Kao
Faculty, Young Musicians Program
Veronica “Vonnie” Kao is a composer from Boston, Massachusetts whose works foreground colors that spin out organically into poetic phrases. Her pieces have been likened to “flower(s) slowly blossoming,” and take inspiration from a variety of contemporary musical styles, visual arts, and literature. Her works have been performed by Talujon, The Rhythm Method Quartet, Horizon Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Boston Conservatory Sinfonietta, and more. Veronica holds a Platinum Prize and the Artistic Visionary Special Award from the Beethoven International Music Competition S1 2023 and was a finalist in the International Artists Competition. Her choral composition, “Two-Headed Calf,” was the winning composition of the U.S. Navy’s 2023 Alton Adams Award for Emerging Composers. She holds a B.A. from Williams College and an M.M. from the Boston Conservatory. Notable teachers include Victoria Cheah, Mischa Salkind-Pearl, Zachary Wadsworth, and Gabriele Proy. Veronica also remains an avid performer on flute and piccolo and is a passionate educator. She is very excited to be teaching at Walden again and is looking forward to a fun summer!
Zach Amdur
Zach Amdur is a classical tenor from Buffalo, NY, currently studying vocal performance at the Eastman School of Music under Anthony Dean Griffey. He is passionate about both solo and choral music, performing in the Eastman Chorale. An aspiring choral conductor, Zach has conducted through Eastman’s ACDA chapter, audits William Weinert’s graduate choral conducting class, and is pursuing coursework in music education and conducting. Zach attended the Walden School’s Young Musicians Program in the summer of 2023 and is thrilled to return as staff this summer.
“What is particularly special about Walden is that it doesn’t just teach music. The people at Walden teach each other how to build and care for creative communities full of diverse perspectives. We just happen to do this through music. As a former student and current faculty member it is a privilege to be a part of this community, but it is not something that everyone gets to experience. The power of such a community is special and something worth creating in every part of our lives and sharing with the people around us.”
– Alex Christie, Walden faculty
Past Faculty and Staff
Adam Albrecht
David Carlton Adams
Ben Aldridge
Jim Altieri
Zaki Andoh
Leah Asher
Anastasia Baker
Katherine Balch
Erica Ball
Anne Deane Berman
Meade Bernard
Whit Bernard
Madeline Bersamina
Christianne Bessières Lane
Marshall Bessières
Megan Grace Beugger
Tamar Bloch
Andrew Bobker
Amy Bolaños
William Bolles-Beaven
June Bonacich
Ethan Borshansky
Cynthia Brackbill Harkum
Eliza Brown
Sara Brown
Tom Brustman
Liz Bucko
Ann Callaway
Thomas Carr
Nansi Carroll
Alan Chan
Alex Christie
Dasom Chung
Joshua Clampitt
Mitchell Clark
Jeffrey Cohen
Tom Colohan
Kittie Cooper
Sarah Cornog
Stephen Coxe
Robert Crites
Shawn Crouch
Trevor Danko
Derek David
Charlie Dees
Gaela Dennison-Leonard
Carol Thomas Downing
Amy Dinsmore
David Drucker
Shannon Dunning
Jeff Dutter
Anouk Erni
Paul Ettlinger
Nicholas Emerson
Bradley Evans
Hali Fieldman
Douglas Hertz Friedman
Stacy Garrop
Michael Gilberston
Ann Goehe
Demmanuel Gonzalez
Terry L. Greene II
Maddy Greenfield
Rebekah Griffin Greene
Kathryn Grisbacher
Susan Hahs
Steven Hankle
Dawn Denham Haynes
George Halsell
Jason Haney
William Hawkins
Jeffrey Hebden
Lynn Taylor Hebden
Thomas Hecht
Erika Homann
Ashlin Hunter
Lukáš Janata
Joyce Jopkins
Brooke Joyce
Rachel Iba
Rachel Israel
Bonnie Jacobowitz
Nancy Tsuyuki Jerome
Dana Jessen
Beatrice Jindra
Michael Johanson
Evan Johnson
Samuel Lord Kalcheim
Ben Kamen
Ross Karre
Laura Keeler
Alysoun Kegel
William Kelly
Nina Kindrachuk
Seth Knopp
Hilary Kole
Elyse Kolodin
Josie Kovash
Michael Kropf
Thomas Kraines
Kary Kramer
Leland Kusmer
Gabriel Kyne
Marguerite Ladd
Esther Landau
Damon Lee
Teresa LeVelle
Wesley Levers
Amy Logsdon
Lois London
Tom Lopez
Amelia Lukas
Christopher Luna-Mega
Virginia Luna-Mega
Sky Macklay
Tony Makarome
Cadence Manuel
Emil Margolis
Ted Masur
Nate May
Jed McGiffin
Rob McLean
Laura Mehiel
Jenna Melissas
Lila Meretzky
Sally Mitchell
Jonathan Miller
Noah Mlotek
Ted Moore
Gary Monheit
Brianna Mosley
Ian Munro
Ellie Murphy-Weise
Pedja Muzijevic
Paul Nauert
Aurora Nealand
Georgann Nedwell
Alex Ness
Elliot Nguyen
Tierney O’Brien
Francois Oeshkin
Nnenna Ogwo
Denise Ondishko
Jefferson Packer
Robert Paterson
Susanna Payne-Passmore
Carlos Enrique Pereira
Molly Pindell
Patricia Plude
Sam Pluta
Carol Prochazka
Erin Quist
Pamela Layman Quist
Judith Pannill Raiford
Ruth Rainero
Brendon Randall-Myers
Nirvan Ranganathan
Lance Reddick
Sarah Riskind
Marco Roberts
Brian Rogan
Montana Rogers
Colin Roshak
Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie
Julia Swift Saul
Danielle Schindler Cheung
Robin Seto
Daniel Shaud
Noelle Shipman
Moshe Shulman
Hamilton Sims
Bill Stevens
Garth Sunderland
Zoltan Szabo
Dan Temkin
Andrew Thams
Peter Thompson
Jennifer Turner
Karissa Ulrich
Becca Van Kirk
Leo Wanenchak
Arté Warren
Chris Wild
Evan Williams
Samantha Wolf
Cody Wright
Marie Claire Whiteford
John Yankee
We are always looking for outstanding team members.