Faculty & Staff

Aditya Nirvaan Ranganathan is a violinist, composer, producer, and student at Swarthmore College, where he is double majoring in Music and Physics. Nirvaan hails from, in equal parts, New York City and Mumbai. He picked up the violin at the age of 4, and currently studies violin with Ms. Barbara Sonies, and music theory and composition with Gerald Levinson.

Nirvaan spent 3 summers at the Young Musicians Program, and has performed with the International Honour Orchestra, Bombay Chamber Orchestra, and Swarthmore College Orchestra. You are most likely to find him meticulously editing Ableton music projects, watching soccer, or enjoying the company of friends and family.

Christopher Luna-Mega is a composer and improviser. He studied Composition at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México –UNAM (B.M.) and Mills College (M.A.), as well as Film/Communication Theory (Universidad Iberoamericana –UIA, Mexico City. Influenced by coniferous forests, the films and writings of Andrey Tarkovsky, and the practice of focus and silence, his work analyzes sounds from natural and urban environments and translates them into notated music for performers and electronics.

His orchestral music has been performed by the Orquestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, cond. Tonino Battista; Iceland Symphony Orchestra, cond. Ilan Volkov; Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra, cond. Gregory Oh; and Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, cond. José Luis Castillo. Ensembles that have performed his work include Yarn|Wire, The William Winant Percussion Group, JACK Quartet, and The Arditti String Quartet. Recently, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov performed Splatter, commissioned by improviser and composer Roscoe Mitchell for the Tectonics new music festival in Glasgow, Scotland. The piece is a translation of a tempestuous free improvisation by Roscoe Mitchell (bass saxophone), Kikanju Baku (drum set) and Craig Taborn (electronics).
Luna-Mega has taught Composition, Musicianship, Orchestration and Introduction to Electronic Music in the National School of Music in Mexico, Mills College and the University of Virginia, where he currently pursues a PhD in Composition and Computer Technologies as a Jefferson Scholars Foundation fellow.

Daniel Temkin (b. 1986) began composing at 13, and his work has been supported by ASCAP, BMI, Earshot, American Composers Forum, the Theodore Presser Foundation, and others. Daniel has received fellowships from the Aspen, Brevard, and Fontainebleau festivals, and he has been Composer-in-Residence with Music From Angel Fire (New Mexico), Chamber Music by the Bay (San Francisco), and the Intimacy of Creativity Festival (Hong Kong).

Daniel is particularly recognized for his orchestral music. In 2016 Bright Sheng conducted Rising Moon with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the Indianapolis Symphony performed Cataclysm, which received the orchestra’s Marilyn K. Glick Prize. Other works have been performed by the Nashville Symphony, St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic, and numerous festival and collegiate orchestras. Daniel’s vocal and chamber works are also regularly performed worldwide. In 2016-17, Daniel had premieres with the Tsanevski Quartet (Germany), the New England Piano Quartet (six-city China tour), and the Mirror Visions Ensemble (NYC), as well as the CD release of his work Blossoming, recorded by the PRISM Quartet for XAS/Naxos records. In 2017-18, Astral Artists has commissioned Daniel to compose a violin duo for brothers Nikki and Timmy Chooi, while the Weis Arts Center will commission a new piece for double bassist Xavier Foley. Other projects include a violin concerto for Francisco Fullana, a song cycle for soprano Ariadne Greif, and a new work for the Pennsylvania Music Teachers Association.

Daniel holds degrees from Rutgers, Curtis, New England Conservatory, and the University of Southern California. He has taught at the collegiate level since 2009 and he has led outreach events and music workshops throughout the U.S. This is his first summer at the Walden School.

danieltemkincomposer.com

Praised for her diverse talents, bassoonist Dana Jessen is highly active as a chamber musician, improviser and new music specialist. She is the co-founder of the Bay Area reed quintet, Splinter Reeds, and has performed with prominent ensembles including the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Ensemble Dal Niente, Calefax Reed Quintet, Callithumpian Consort, Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra and the Amsterdam Contemporary Ensemble, among others. As the founder of the Rushes Ensemble, Dana spearheaded the consortium commission of Rushes, an hour-long composition for seven bassoons by composer and Bang on a Can co-founder, Michael Gordon.

Her recordings can be heard on Cantaloupe, New World, Splinter, Evil Rabbit, Oberlin Music, and the RIOJA record labels. She will be releasing her debut solo album on Innova Recordings in Fall 2016 featuring new works for bassoon and electronics by Sam Pluta, Paula Matthusen, Peter V. Swendsen and Kyle Bruckmann. Dana holds a M.M. in bassoon performance from the New England Conservatory of Music and a M.M. in improvisation from the Artez Hogeschool voor de Kunsten. She lived in Amsterdam for three years as the recipient of a J. William Fulbright Fellowship and a HSP Huygens Fellowship where she researched contemporary and improvised music. Dana is currently the Director of Professional Development at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and along with playing with The Walden School Players she teaches for Walden’s Young Musicians Program.

Derek David is a composer based in Boston, Massachusetts. His dramatic and vibrant chamber music has been performed in both Europe and the United States and has received great recognition from audiences and critics alike. His works have garnered praise in the US and abroad and have won several prestigious awards. Upon hearing his Viola
Sonata, composer John Adams declared to be “dazzled by [David’s] capability and musicality, [and his] masterful demonstration of technique.” Derek’s String Quartet (2011), has been met with international recognition and repeated performances. It was described by Sabino Pena of France’s Classiquenews.com as “a true musical jewel of the 21st Century.” The quartet was awarded the EAMA Nadia Boulanger Institute Prize in (2011) as well as the Morton Gould ASCAP Award (2011). Additionally, the quartet was awarded first place by the American prize (2015). Dr. David holds a DMA from the New England Conservatory of Music and is currently a teaching fellow at Harvard University where he is a three-time recipient of the “Harvard University Distinction in Teaching Award”. Outside of composition, his musical areas of interest also extend to Medieval theory and musicology, The Beatles, and Jewish Music.

www.derekdavid.com

Hailed by music critic Kyle Gann as a “precociously interesting composer,” Erica Ball’s works have been heard across the country in Chicago, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Her music has been performed by numerous ensembles including the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Colorado Quartet, the Arneis Quartet, pianist Blair McMillen, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the American Symphony Orchestra. She has participated as a composer in the Deer Valley Music Festival, where her string quartet w(e)aving was premiered by the Arneis Quartet, and the Bowdoin International Music Festival, where she studied with composer Derek Bermel through the generosity of a Subito Grant from the American Composers Forum’s Philadelphia chapter.

Erica holds a B.A. in Music from Bard College, where she studied with Keith Fitch, Kyle Gann, and Joan Tower. She is currently pursuing a PhD in composition as a Benjamin Franklin Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies with Jay Reise, James Primosch, and Anna Weesner. In addition to her work as a composer, Erica remains active as a violinist, pianist, and music educator, with a special interest in bringing contemporary music to new audiences.

www.ericajball.com

The music of Evan Williams draws from a wide range of influences such as Romanticism, Modernism, Post-Minimalism, and pop music. Williams’s music has been heard across the country and internationally in Canada, Italy, and Switzerland. His work has been performed by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Fifth House Ensemble, the Verb Ballets, and at festivals such as Fresh Inc., SEAMUS, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, the New York City Electronic Music Festival, and the Midwest Composers Symposium. He has been commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Lawrence University Symphony Orchestra, the Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, and others. His work the waters wrecked the sky for unaccompanied clarinet can be found on the album In Memoriam Dinu Ghezzo by The Namaste Ensemble’s “No Borders Quartet,” performed by Italian clarinetist Arianna Tieghi. Williams is also an aspiring conductor and has conducted concerts with the Lawrence University Symphonic Band, numerous chamber ensembles, at the 2012 New Music Festival at BGSU, and with Café MoMus (CCM’s contemporary chamber ensemble).

He has received awards from the National Federation of Music Clubs, ASCAP Plus, and Fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Williams completed his D.M.A. in Composition at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, where he studied with Michael Fiday, Mara Helmuth, and Douglas Knehans, and served as a teaching assistant for electronic music. He also holds degrees from Bowling Green State University and Lawrence University. Evan is excited to be on the faculty of the Young Musicians Program for his second summer.

Katherine Balch (b.1991) writes music that seeks to capture the intimate details of existence through sound. Her work has been commissioned and performed by the Minnesota and Albany Symphony Orchestras, Ensemble Intercontemporain, International Contemporary Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Yale Philharmonia, the New York Youth Symphony and wildUp, among others, and has been featured in IRCAM’s Manifeste, Aspen, Fontainebleau, Norfolk, and Santa Fe music festivals.

Katherine is the 2017-2020 composer-in-residence for the California Symphony, and recently joined the management roster of Young Concert Artists, Inc., where she is the 2017-2019 composer-in-residence. This season includes new pieces for the Tokyo and California Symphonies, and for violist Christophe Desjardins as part of the MANCA festival in Nice, France. Recognitions include awards from ASCAP, BMI, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She completed her B.A./ B.M. in the Tufts University / New England Conservatory double-degree, and her M.M. at Yale School of Music. She is currently pursuing her doctorate at Columbia University, where she studies with Georg Haas and Fred Lerdahl. Passionate about education, she is faculty at Bard College-Conservatory Prep in the Hudson Valley, and is so happy to be returning to Walden for her second summer of creative music making! When not making or listening to music, she can be found baking, collecting leaves, and playing with her cat, Zarathustra.

www.katherinebalch.com

This is Maddy Greenfield’s first year with Walden. Born and raised in Seattle, she is a senior at the University of Washington where she majors in Biology. Maddy has been singing in choirs since elementary school. At UW she sings with University Chorale, with whom she has performed with the Seattle Symphony and recorded a CD. Music and music education always has been and always will be incredibly important and formative for her. In her spare time, Maddy enjoys playing the piano and listening to music of all kinds. Her other interests include volunteer activism. This year she was a volunteer leader with the UW chapter of WashPIRG, an activist organization. In addition, she loves hiking, rock climbing, skiing, backpacking, reading, and walking her dog, Kelly.

As a boy, Meade Bernard went on a whimsical little romp down a hill to a creek, where he found a spotted salamander and named it Charles. They became fast friends – inseparable really – until Charles flew the coop two days later through a crack in the back door in a sly but devastating act of betrayal. More recently, Meade graduated from Oberlin College and Conservatory with degrees in music composition and English, focusing on electroacoustic composition and Modern Culture and Media. In his creative work he often finds himself in cahoots with filmmakers, choreographers, and theater directors, with a focus on immersive “events” designed around a particular venue/space. In recent years he’s occasionally swapped sides in these collaborations, working as a video editor and occasional director for creative and commercial film/video projects. Meade has received awards and recognition from ASCAP, NFAA, Oberlin, and, strangely, the Internet Advertising Awards. In the coming year, Meade is excited to be composing and sound-designing for a new feature film from Tribeca Film Festival award-winning director Kivu Ruhorahoza, the first-ever Rwandan filmmaker to have an international film release. He’ll also be working on several short films, an album of recent music, and he’s thinking about taking up the accordion or learning to play squash, perhaps both.

meadebernard.com

Michael Kropf is a composer living in San Francisco. He has collaborated with the Marin Alsop, the Telegraph Quartet, the San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra, and soprano Erin O’Meally. In 2016, Michael was commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, in partnership with John Adams and Deborah O’Grady’s Pacific Harmony Foundation, to write a new orchestral work called “Spinning Music,” which was premiered on August 6th, 2016 by the Festival Orchestra and Marin Alsop. The work was later described as “a brilliant, rapid fire stretch of perpetual motion,” by classical music critic Joshua Kosman. Upcoming projects include a full-length string quartet being written for the Apple Hill String Quartet and a new work commissioned by the Siroko Flute Duo.

Dr. Rebekah Griffin Greene is an award-winning bassist, composer, pianist, cellist, poet, and singer who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in bass performance, composition, and music education from the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, as well as a doctorate in bass performance from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

After recovering from a serious wrist injury and winning the Alice Nelson Music Competition in 1995 on the bass, she orchestrated her own bass and piano piece for the San Luis Obispo Symphony, launching her career as a composer and bass soloist. Now active in New York City as a freelance jazz, solo, chamber, and orchestral musician, she has performed her own works, as well as traditional recital repertoire, in such places as Hong Kong, Quebec, New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Her composition teachers include Morten Lauridsen and Frank Ticheli, and her bass teachers include Paul Ellison, Joseph Carver and Kurt Muroki. Having taught classroom music in both Los Angeles Unified and New York City Schools, she is currently teaching private and group bass at the Lucy Moses School, Special Music School, Bloomingdale School of Music and the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts. She lives in Queens, New York City, with her trombonist husband, Dr. Terry Greene II, her son, Kayden, and many instruments. Please visit YouTube to see some of Rebekah’s compositions and performances.

Renée Favand-See is a composer and soprano who lives in Portland, Oregon. Her works explore the music of words, of natural and made environments, of emotions and spiritual questions. These investigations yield vocal music of all stripes, Musique Concrète-esque electronic pieces, lyrically driven instrumental music, and counterpoint or the relationships that unfold in the spaces between voices.

Renée recently composed a cycle of songs based on scientific texts for mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn, premiered at HERE Arts Center in New York City in 2016. Among her commissions are works for Resonance Ensemble, Five Boroughs Music Festival, Lucy Shelton and Eighth Blackbird, Sequitur, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, American Opera Projects, Wet Ink Ensemble, Outer Voices Festival, coloratura soprano Alissa Rose and cellist Ha-Yang Kim. Other groups who have performed her music include The Julians, Friends of Rain, Electrogals, Del Sol String Quartet, Peabody Trio, and many singers, including Jesse Blumberg, Blythe Gaissert, Anna Haagenson, Jennifer Aylmer, Kristin Norderval, and William Ferguson. Renée is a member of Cascadia Composers and its offshoot of women, Crazy Jane Composers.

Her honors include a grant from the American Music Center for her oratorio Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes., a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Bearns Prize from Columbia University. As a singer, Renée enjoys performing works by living composers, singing with Third Angle, Resonance Ensemble, Cappella Romana, Oregon Catholic Press, Crazy Jane Composers and Cascadia Composers, and studying voice with the wonderful and wise Nancy
Olson-Chatalas.

Renée holds a B.M. from Eastman, and a M.M. in composition from the Yale School of Music. She studied composition with Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler, Warren Benson and David Liptak at Eastman, and then with Mathias Spahlinger at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, and with Martin Bresnick, David Lang and Jacob Druckman at the Yale School of Music. Her earliest compositional studies began at age twelve at The Walden School. In addition to being on the faculty of the Creative Musicians Retreat, Renée currently teaches composition and music theory at Portland State University and Lewis & Clark College.

reneefavand.com

Known internationally for his laptop performances with groups like Rocket Science, Wet Ink Ensemble, and The Peter Evans Quintet, New York City-based composer/improviser Sam Pluta, Academic Dean and Director of Electronic Music, is one of the most compelling electronics performers of his generation. As a composer, he has been commissioned and premiered by Mivos Quartet, Yarn/Wire, ICE, Timetable Percussion, RIOT Trio, So Percussion, Dave Eggar, and PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and has performed internationally as a laptop soloist and chamber musician, with appearances at the Donaueschingen Festival, the Moers Festival, Bimhaus, Porgy and Bess, and the Vortex, amongst other international venues and festivals. Sam’s music is released on quiet design and Carrier Records, a label he runs with Jeff Snyder and David Franzson, and his performances can also be found on More Is More, Tzadik, and hat[now]ART.

A devoted pedagogue, Sam also directs the Electronic Music Studio at Manhattan School of Music. He holds a Doctorate in Music Composition from Columbia University, and was just appointed Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Chicago where he will begin working in the fall of 2016.

sampluta.com