Faculty & Staff

Staff, Young Musicians Program

Anastasia Baker is a singer and clarinetist entering her junior year at Montclair State University in New Jersey. There she studies music education under the vocal training of Kelley Hijleh and Karen Driscoll. Anastasia enjoys studying a wide variety of musical styles including classical, jazz, pop, and musical theater. In recent years she lead her high school marching band as drum major, and played various leads in musical productions such as Maria from The Sound of Music. She partakes in many vocal and instrumental ensembles, and is eager to share her knowledge of music as a teacher in the near future. 

In her free time Anastasia enjoys painting, baking, and putting together PowerPoint presentation nights with her friends.

Staff, Young Musicians Program & Creative Musicians Retreat

Arté Warren is a flautist, freelance pianist, aspiring songwriter, producer, and audio engineer from Baltimore, Maryland. He attends Morgan State University in Baltimore where he’s entering his senior year as a Music major with a concentration in Flute Performance having studied under Dr. Anita Thesen, and is dual-enrolled for his Master of Arts in Teaching. He is a member of the Magnificent Marching Machine at Morgan State University under the direction of Mr. Melvin N. Miles Jr. Arté is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi National Honorary Band Fraternity.

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

Brian Fancher is a music educator and vocalist residing in Waite Hill, Ohio. He teaches at Mayfield High School where he works with two bands, three choirs, marching band, show choir, and the fall and spring musicals, while also teaching music theory courses and advising the Ultimate Frisbee Club and Drama Club. He can also be found singing Baritone in the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. He earned his Bachelor of Music Education degree from The College of Wooster, where he studied voice with Dr. Carrie Culver.

In his spare time, he likes to eat, play Ultimate Frisbee, play video games, and take pictures of people, places, and things.

Staff, Young Musicians Program

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

Chris Wild’s performances have been lauded as “insatiable” (New York Times), resulting from his enthusiastic pursuit of musical connections. A conductor, cellist, and music educator, he now resides in Indianapolis with wife Eliza Brown, where he was recently appointed conductor of the Wabash Valley Youth Symphony. Previously a resident of the Michiana tri-state region, he has served as faculty at Andrews University and the University of Notre Dame, and cellist of the Euclid String Quartet. Recognized for his performances and recordings of contemporary music, he has been a member of the Chicago-based Ensemble Dal Niente since 2007. Recent performances have taken him to Walt Disney Concert Hall, Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion, Symphony Center (Chicago), Teatro Colón (Argentina), and the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico). Chris enjoys a broad range of quality music but is befuddled by Eliza’s love for Bad Bunny. In addition to conducting and performing Classical repertoire, recent collaborations have included performances with fiddler Mark O’Connor, improvisations with guitarist Gabriel Datcu, and joining Mannheim Steamroller’s holiday tour.

Chris began his cello studies at the age of five in British Columbia, Canada, where he would later win first place in the strings category of the Canadian Music Competition. An active teenager, he filled his days playing varsity sports, keeping his rock band on life support, making award-winning animation videos depicting the life of Bigfoot, and practicing cello scales. In due time, he went on to earn a BM and MM in cello performance and music education from the University of Michigan, and many years later completed his DMA in orchestral conducting at Northwestern University, culminating with his thesis titled “Charles Ives’ Three Places in New England: an Interpretation and a Conducting Guide.” In addition to performing and teaching, he occasionally creates new episodes for his YouTube channel Great Moments in Orchestral History, and enjoys being a Hoosier with Eliza.

Colin Roshak is a conductor, clarinetist and entrepreneur. He completed his bachelors degree at Oberlin Conservatory, and his masters of music at Bard College. In the years between his studies he lived and worked in Alaska, on the ancestral lands of Tlingit, Haida and Dena’ina peoples. In Alaska, Colin played principal clarinet with the Anchorage Opera and Pops orchestras, served as the assistant conductor for the Alaska Youth Orchestras, wrote for the Anchorage Daily News and Anchorage Press, amidst other creative ventures. These include a soundscape ecology internship with the Anchorage Museum, operation of a gluten free pasta business, private clarinet instruction and guest instruction with the Anchorage School District and University of Alaska. Colin spent summers from 2018-2021 as an instructor and administrator with the Sitka Fine Arts Camp on Tlingit Aaní. Colin has founded ensembles ranging from new music ensembles to string orchestras and state-wide community music programs. Under his direction, the Alaska Virtual Symphony provided free weekly music lessons to more than 60 students, ages 5 to 80. The program culminated in a virtual concert and three-part conversation series with Cliburn medalist Daniel Hsu, renowned flutist Kelly Zimba and Grammy Award-winning band Portugal. The Man. Most recently, he founded the Sinfonietta Project at Bard College; an ensemble focused on performing canonical and new modern works, with a focus on student works and entrepreneurship. Colin is a proud student of Richard Hawkins, Tim Weiss, James Bagwell, Kai-Yun Lu and Craig Hay. His day typically begins with a smoothie and his mind often drifts to the Chugach mountains. Colin has strong opinions about salt and pepper, encourages everyone to drink more water and highly recommends Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. Please read more at colinjroshak.com.

Staff, Young Musicians Program

Dasom Chung (b. 1997) is a 2015 Walden School alum and is thrilled to serve as the resident lifeguard, photographer, and staff for the Walden School 2022 program.

Currently studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Dasom is working towards a Professional Music degree with concentrations in Music Technology and Musical Theater Performance. Her favorite thing ever is to immerse herself into new and invigorating environments in which she can continue to grow and learn new things, and as such will be studying abroad in Valencia, Spain this upcoming academic year.

When not absorbed in her music studies, she loves to spend her time cooking, taking part in artistic activities (like pottery and painting!), napping, and spending time with her beloved sister. She also loves to dance and travel around the world, sometimes both at once. She was first introduced to competitive ballroom dancing while studying at Carnegie Mellon University, and has fallen in love with all different kinds of partner dances since.

Leadership Team, Young Musicians Program

Douglas Hertz (b. 1993) is a composer, educator, and multi-instrumentalist based in Queens, NY. He first became involved with The Walden School as a Young Musicians Program student in 2010 and has since held staff and faculty roles at both the Young Musicians Program and Creative Musicians Retreat.

As an educator, Hertz specializes in teaching musical creativity through composition, improvisation, movement, music theory, singing, and instrumental studies. He has taught in Ann Arbor, Michigan’s public schools, with the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composer’s Program, and at the Thurnauer School of Music in New Jersey, where he is co-chair of the Composition and Creative Musicianship Program. An aspiring public school music educator, he is working towards his New York State K-12 music education license and advanced certificate in music education at Brooklyn College.  He additionally earned his B.A. in music from Bard College a M.M. in music composition from the University of Michigan.

Hertz’s compositions have been heard around the United States and abroad, having been recently programmed by the GAIDA Festival (Lithuania), Aries Composers Festival, Midwest Composers Symposium, PASIC, Nief Norf Summer Festival, Atlantic Music Festival, the Dynamic Music Festival, Bard College’s Music Alive series and the Deer Valley Music Festival. He has also held recent residencies with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music and Periapsis Music and Dance. He is also an avid collaborator, having worked recently with choreographers Al Evangelista and Janice Rosario, visual artist Lizzy Chiappini, and performance group, Call Your Mom.

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

Composer Eliza Brown attended The Walden School as a YMP student from 2000-2002, and has held many roles in the community in subsequent summers, including staff, faculty, and leadership team. Eliza’s compositions have been performed by leading interpreters of new music (including Ensemble Dal Niente, Spektral Quartet, ensemble recherche, International Contemporary Ensemble, Network for New Music, Ensemble SurPlus, and Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble), heard on stages throughout the USA and abroad, and released on the Navona and New Focus labels, among others.

Eliza’s music, described as “delicate, haunting, and introspective” by Symphony Magazine, is frequently intertextual, opening dialogues with pre-existing pieces of music, historical styles, field recordings, non-musical artworks, and other artifacts. It is also often interdisciplinary: Eliza has collaborated with practitioners of theater, dance, architecture, poetry, visual art, film, and the sciences, frequently taking on artistic and organizational roles in addition to “composer.” Building intentional, project-specific collaborative processes, with attention to the ethical and equity issues of artistic industries and infrastructures, is an essential part of Eliza’s practice. The monodrama The Body of the State, co-created with six women incarcerated at Indiana Women’s Prison, was commissioned and premiered by Ensemble Dal Niente in October 2017; current projects include Theorem, an interdisciplinary performance work in development with a collective of artists representing many fields, and The Listening Year, a work in progress for New Morse Code based on a year of weekly field recording at Indiana’s Big Walnut Creek. Recent commissioners include a.pe.ri.od.ic, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Spektral Quartet and Scrag Mountain Music, Philadelphia Sinfonia, pianist Clare Longendyke, and Classical Music Indy.

Eliza is an Associate Professor of Music at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN, and was recently awarded DePauw’s 2023 Fisher Fellowship for The Listening Year. Eliza holds a B.Mus. in composition from the University of Michigan and a D.M.A. in composition from Northwestern University.

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.

Staff, Young Musicians Program 

Evan Shaw Johnson (b. 1998) is a composer, arranger, and performer specializing in musical theatre. A recent Midwest transplant to New York City, Evan is a stereotypical theatre nerd. His musical We Are Here was a winner of the 2019 New Voices Project from New Musicals Inc. He has written incidental scores for several plays, including Lindsey Ferrentino’s Ugly Lies the Bone, Laura Marks’s Bethany, and a production of Franz Xaver Kroetz’s Through the Leaves at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 2018. Evan also composes concert music—his catalog includes music for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, solo instruments, and electronics. His music has been performed by groups such as C3LA, HEX Ensemble, Apple Hill Chamber Ensemble, and the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble at CalArts. His choral music is published by See-A-Dot Music Publishing. In addition to his composition work, Evan is active as a theatre arranger, orchestrator, and copyist. Notable credits include music preparation for Fountain of You at the Zeiders American Dream Theater (Virginia Beach 2022), a workshop and full production of Matthew Hardy’s Virtuoso (New York 2019 and Poland 2020), and additional orchestrations for StarKid: Homecoming (Los Angeles 2019), work praised by writers Darren Criss and A.J. Holmes. His current projects include a solo album and the new full-length musical The Scars of Your Body, a collaboration with playwright and lyricist Valerie Work. Evan was a student at The Walden School Young Musicians Program for six summers, 2009-2014, and holds a BFA in Composition from the California Institute of the Arts. Find out more at evanjohnsonmusic.com.

Nurse, Young Musicians Program

Karissa Ulrich: I grew up in Gloucester, MA, and have lived all over the country. I graduated from Skidmore College with a BS degree in Exercise Physiology and went on to study pharmacology. A few years after I graduated from college, I moved to the Caribbean to “find myself”. I volunteered in a small health center and realized I wanted to become a nurse. I attended Simmons College and received my BSN and started working in critical care in Boston, MA.

I decided that I wanted to serve my country and work in areas of relief work. I joined the USAF and was active duty for 3 years. In the USAF, I worked in critical care and infection prevention. After the birth of my second daughter, I separated from active duty and remained in the USAF Reserves. I continued to work in critical care as a civilian. When my third daughter was born our family decided to move back to New England. I had the opportunity to serve as the Interim Director of Infection Prevention in Manchester, NH in 2016. In 2017 I completed my Master’s degree in Nursing. I started teaching for MCPHS University and also worked in Quality and Performance Improvement. I am currently completing my FNP and my Doctorate in Nursing.  My husband and I and our three daughters have been living in NH for 5 years along with our 3 horses, mammoth mule, many chickens, 3 dogs, 2 cats, 6 goats, and 8 donkeys.

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

Lila Meretzky is a composer, educator, and visual artist born and raised in New York City.  She works primarily in chamber, vocal, electronic, and electroacoustic mediums, as well as in music for dance, film, and installation.  Her work is often concerned with (the warping of) memory and language, and subjective experiences of time.  Recent and ongoing collaborations include new works for Sandbox Percussion, Unheard-of//Ensemble, icarus Quartet, Omer Quartet, and the Yale Philharmonia, and for the dance companies New Dialect, X-Contemporary Dance, and the Nashville Ballet.  Her film work includes scoring the 2022 documentary A Climate of Anxiety. As a critic, her writings have been published on the arts blog ArtsNash and she has been featured on the radio at WXNA Nashville.  As an educator, she has taught composition and musicianship at the Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire and the W.O. Smith Music School in Nashville, Tennessee, and with Yale’s Music in Schools Initiative. She has also taught composition and was a teaching fellow in music technology in the music department at Yale College. Lila has attended such festivals as the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Cortona Sessions for New Music, and Bang on a Can Summer Festival. At Bang on a Can, her works were performed as part of the first LOUD Weekend Festival at Mass MoCA in July 2021. Her other pursuits include performing as a singer and pianist, and making noise on her laptop and accordion.

Paper collage is Lila’s primary visual medium, and her work has been featured in Off Latch Press’ inaugural Off Latch Zine.

Lila is a graduate of the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, where she co-founded the new music concert series A Humming Under My Feet. She also holds an MM and MMA from the Yale School of Music. 

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

Lukáš Janata (b. 1995)  is a Czech composer, performer, and educator. His music has been widely performed in his native country and many countries throughout the world. He has received numerous commissions, most notably by the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox, New York Cantori, Punkt Contemporary Choir, Aries Percussion Ensemble, and the Jablonova Youth String Orchestra (for the occasion of Concerto Bohemia held in Prague).  He will serve as Composer in Residence for the International Orange Chorale, San Francisco, in the 2021-2022 season.

Lukáš’ composition mentors include  John Corigliano, David Conte (MM ’19, San Francisco Conservatory Of Music), and Otomar Kvěch (DiS (BA) ’17, Prague Conservatoire,) He has participated in masterclasses with composers George Lewis, Allain Gaussin, Liviu Marinescu, Dimitris Maronidis, Michel Merlet, and Ériks Ešenvalds, and is collaborating on various projects with a composer Nico Muhly, and conductors Ragnar Bohlin and Mark Shapiro. Lukáš began his musical activities as a choral singer with the award-winning children’s choir Severáček, participating in performances in many European countries. He sings in the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and is a cantor and bass section leader for St Monica’s Catholic Church. He has served as a visiting artist and lecturer at the Millennium School, the California State University, East Bay, (with Tin Yi Wong,) New York University. He currently teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music. He has taught piano and music education at the Willow Creek Academy, Mid Peninsula Music Academy, and the California Conservatory of Music. Lukáš will be on the composition faculty at the Walden School for the summer 2021.

Lukáš is an enthusiastic advocate for the performance of new music. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Mouthscape, a chamber choir based at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, which focuses on championing new works by SFCM students, alumni, and faculty composers. In 2014 he was a founding member of Punkt, a contemporary chamber choir based at the Prague Conservatoire. 

The young composer is also a passionate hiker and had biked across Europe.

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

Michael Kropf is a Michigan-based composer whose work deals with hidden emotions and evocative places.  He has collaborated with Marin Alsop, the Ann Arbor Symphony, the Apple Hill String Quartet, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. His music has been described as “a brilliant, rapid fire stretch of perpetual motion,” by the SF Chronicle’s Joshua Kosman. Recent project include a violin sonata for violinist Matt Albert and pianist Forrest Howell. He is currently writing a violin concerto for Sabrina Tabby and Contemporaneous.

Michael is also an active music teacher, pianist, violinist, and conductor. He has taught classes at the University of Michigan, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College and the Academy of Art. He serves as an academic dean and faculty member at the Walden School Young Musicians Young Musician’s Program in New Hampshire. 

He earned his doctoral degree in composition at The University of Michigan in 2022, where he studied with Kristin Kuster and Evan Chambers.  He received his Master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory in 2016, where he studied with Evan Chambers. He has also received private study in composition from John Adams.

His work has received recognition from numerous institutions, including ASCAP, The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the The Music Teacher’s National Association.

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

Nate May (B. 1987) is an American composer whose music draws on research and imagination, often treating contemporary issues of place, migration, and environment with textural intricacy, rhythmic drive, and a taste for repurposed sounds. Raised in Huntington, West Virginia, much of his work stems from a “fascination, love, and respect for the people” of Appalachia (Soapbox), including his oratorio State—premiered by singer Kate Wakefield (Lung) and MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir—and his monodrama, Dust in the Bottomland—set in present-day West Virginia and sung by lyric bass Andrew Munn, which has been performed twelve times in seven states and broadcast on radio and television. He has been a fellow at the highSCORE festival (Pavia, Italy) and the Sō Percussion Summer Institute (Princeton, New Jersey), and was selected as one of three U.S. composers to participate in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2017 National Composers Intensive. He has received commissions from the Walden School, Brianna Matzke, Thea Rossen, and Neutrals Duo, and his work has been performed by Eric Wubbels, Adam Sliwinski, Nathan Nabb, Patchwork Duo, Hajnal Pivnick, Quartetto Indaco, and many others. Large-scale collaborations include the world-touring work Spiral by choreographer/dancer Wanjiru Kamuyu, and Kalahari Waits, the debut album of indigenous experimental trio Khoi Khonnexion, produced during a year in South Africa on a Reese Miller scholarship from the Telluride Association.

Currently pursuing a D.M.A. in composition at Yale, he holds degrees from Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (M.M., Composition) and the University of Michigan (B.F.A., Jazz and Contemplative Studies), and has studied with Christopher Theofanidis, Geri Allen, Ellen Rowe, Stephen Rush, Miguel Roig-Francolí, and Michael Fiday. His work has received support from ArtsWave, People’s Liberty, and the Berea College Appalachian Sound Fellowship. He currently serves as a Teaching Fellow at Yale, and previously served on adjunct faculty at Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. This is his second summer teaching at Walden.

Staff & Assistant Technical Director, Young Musicians Program

Nicholas Emerson is a composer, producer, teacher, and guitarist, from Portland, OR and currently teaches at Reed College and Portland State University. He studied music production composition with Renée Favand-See at Portland State University and has a BS in Sonic Arts & Music Production. He is very active in the local classical music scene, helping to cultivate the incredible wealth of youth talent in the Pacific Northwest, and is involved with organizations including Fear No Music Young Composers Project, Youth Music Project, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, Northwest Children’s Theater & School, and many others. He has experience composing chamber music, vocal music and recently premiered a concerto for guitar and orchestra with local guitarist David Tutmark and the Tillikum Chamber Orchestra.

Staff, Young Musicians Program

Nina Kindrachuk is an indie-pop singer/songwriter based in Music City and graduated this past May, also in Nashville, Tennessee with a music business degree. Although she loved the honor of initially belonging to the School of Music as a vocal major, having an understanding of the business side of the music industry was equally important to honing her craft as a developing artist. 

Nina was first introduced to the Walden School in the summer of 2015, as she dragged her feet in fear of a new dialect of music making (to her); composing. Having taken voice lessons since the fifth grade, she was very comfortable with performing in a commercial setting (pop, jazz, indie, classical) and learning vocal techniques. Before she knew it though, her eyes were opened to an entirely new perspective through the welcoming commentary in weekly composer’s forums, the zany Walden dances and camp traditions, and the overwhelming show of affection and open-mindedness from the entire Walden community. 

Outside of attending Walden for two summers, she attended Brentwood, TN’s JAM Camp for one summer; collaborating in the jazz band as the frontwoman and singer in a separate vocal ensemble. In the summer of 2016, Nina attended Middle Tennessee State University’s Governor’s School for the Arts (GSFTA), learning classical voice and has been involved in the Tennessee All-state and Mid-state choirs since middle school. Her vocal coaches, Morgan Kasprowicz and Mark Thress, had an especially profound impact on her respect for vocal health and maximizing one’s vocal mechanics in a creative way. Furthermore, she has had an amazing time partaking in high school, college, and extracurricular a cappella groups (both SATB and SSAA). 

Nina hopes to combine her experiences from all of the aforementioned schools and private vocal lessons to fuel her budding artist career through more consistent songwriting and an eventual EP release.

In her spare time, Nina can be found testing out new recipes for herself and her friends, listening to a funny or psychology-heavy podcast, or continuing to teach herself acoustic guitar. She does not recommend performing all of these activities at the same time. 

Faculty, Creative Musicians Retreat

Osnat Netzer /osˈnat ˈnɛtsɛʁ/ is a composer, performer and educator. Osnat creates her compositions collaboratively, tailoring her work to the performer’s sensibilities, physicality and improvisational inclinations. She takes inspiration from cognitive linguistics, and in dialogue with the embodied experience of physical forces, such as potential and kinetic energy, resulting in compositions that are rich in musical languages and connected to the fulsome pursuit for tension and relaxation.

Born in Haifa, Israel, Netzer studied composition and piano at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where her primary composition teacher was Menachem Zur. She came to the United States in 2003 for graduate studies in composition with Robert Cuckson at Mannes school of Music and continued her studies with Lee Hyla at New England Conservatory, where she earned her doctorate in 2011. In 2019, she joined the faculty of DePaul University as Assistant Professor of Composition and Musicianship.

Netzer’s works have been commissioned and performed by Ensemble Dal Niente, ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), Patchwork, mezzo-soprano Lucy Dhegrae, bass David Salsbery Fry, saxophonists Kenneth Radnofsky, Doug O’Connor and Geoffrey Landman, Spektral Quartet, and Winsor Music, among many others, published by Edition Peters and earthsongs, and recorded on Bridge Records and New Focus Recordings.

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. 

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

A “versatile violinist,” (LA Times) – Rachel Iba is a Los Angeles-based violinist, performance artist, conductor and composer whose work investigates the absurdity in our personal and political relationships. She regularly works within a diverse range of musical styles, including classical, contemporary, jazz, folk, and cross-cultural traditions.

Rachel is featured on numerous film scores and studio recordings, including collaborations with Amanda Palmer, Russell Platt, and Vinny Golia. She has been featured on NPR with world-folk band Primero Sueño, and performs with a wide range of ensembles including Wild Up, Synchromy New Music Collective, Vitamin String Quartet, and is the concertmaster of Bridge to Everywhere. She is also an accomplished baroque violinist, and has played with Jeannette Sorrell and members of Apollo’s Fire.

Rachel is passionate about using art as a way to examine larger systemic imbalances. In her original work, she integrates music, standup comedy and clownwork to explore intersectional feminism, environmentalism, classism, and performance psychology. She has performed at the Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, REDCAT, and numerous other venues within the US and abroad.

As an educator, Rachel is the Artistic Director of the Santa Clarita Valley Youth Orchestra. She has lectured extensively in music history and has appeared as an instructor and guest lecturer with organizations including California Institute of the Arts, Mount St. Mary’s University, Ventura College, Longy School of Music, and is on the faculty of Kinhaven Music School. She is also a regular pre-concert lecturer for the LA Philharmonic.

She holds degrees from California Institute of the Arts and Oberlin Conservatory.

Outside of performing, she is a lover of interior design, cooking, hiking, and her cats “Pizza Hut” & “Taco Bell.”

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

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, Broadway 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, Honolulu and Chicago. Her chamber pieces have been performed by ensembles on four continents, and her Atlantis Revelation soundtrack has had hundreds of thousands of internet radio plays since 2012.

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, Bloomingdale School of Music, and the Thurnauer Music School, where she is also the Head of Theory and Ear Training. She lives in Queens, New York City, with her trombonist husband, Dr. Terry Greene II, her son, Kayden, daughter Phoenix, and many instruments. Please visit YouTube to see some of Rebekah’s compositions and performances.

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. 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.

In January, 2021 Trio Triumphatrix and Voices of Ascension premiered Renée’s works First Flight and We Need Earth for their production Astronautica: Voices of Women in Space. Recent projects include: Solitude for soprano Arwen Myers; Ten full moons for Northwest Art Song; Wie der Katz mit der Maus for fEARnoMUSIC; Growing for Portland Piano International; as well as a recording project of her work Only in falling with Resonance Ensemble. Among her commissions are works for Voices of Ascension, Resonance Ensemble, Five Boroughs Music Festival, Lucy Shelton and Eighth Blackbird, Sequitur, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, American Opera Projects, Wet Ink Ensemble, Outer Voices Festival, 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 Hai-Ting Chinn, Jesse Blumberg, Blythe Gaissert, Hannah Penn, Anna Haagenson, Alissa Rose, Jennifer Aylmer, Kristin Norderval, 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.

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.

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 at 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 Creative Musicians Retreat in New England.

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

Samuel Lord Kalcheim (he/him) composes in a variety of styles, old and new, and is dedicated to writing music both emotionally and intellectually satisfying, balancing tender lyricism with tight and complex formal architecture. Building on an expertise in 18th and 19th c. styles and forms, Samuel writes expressive new music for today’s sensibilities. Samuel’s past collaborations include works for soprano Estelí Gomez, the Delgani String Quartet, University of Oregon’s Musicking Conference and the Elsewhere Ensemble. Two more recent works, a solo cello work for Spanish cellist Juan Aguilera Cerezo, and a song cycle based around his own translations of Ancient Greek texts for NYC-based non-binary tenor Kristyn Michele—this project being part of a larger goal to expand the vocal repertoire in creating works for non-traditional voices—were presented on March 3rd at a New York City debut concert, Ancient Wisdom, Emerging Voices: New Music by Samuel Lord Kalcheim, at the Tenri Cultural Institute. This sold-out concert out was given a glowing review in New York Concert Review. An avid proponent of the music of our time, Samuel supports the work of his colleagues as conductor, performer, impresario and teacher. He has taught theory and musicianship courses at the college level for five years, and now teaches composition and theory privately, having developed his own approach based on keyboard harmony and score study.

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

New York native Dr. Terry L. Greene II is a trombonist, improviser, drummer, arranger, composer, educator and poet. Terry received his Doctorate in Musical Arts from Stony Brook University in 2008, studying under trombonists Ray Anderson and Michael Powell, as well as outside of school studies with trombonists Steve Turre and Vincent Gardener.

He has since then performed with The Roots, Tony Allen, Amp Fidler, Macy Grey, David Murray, Oliver Lake, Elliot Sharp, Mark Helias, Ray Anderson, Charlie Persip, Rufus Reid, Steve Turre, Kim Burrell, Kirk Franklin, Israel Houghton, and several other notable creative artists.

You can hear Terry as a trombonist on Oliver Lake’s latest big band album titled “Wheels,” Elliot Sharp’s 2016 Aggregat album called “Dilectrical,” an NPR filming of David Murray’s Cuban Ensemble, and “congahead.com” performances with Chia’s Dance Party at LP founder Martin Cohen’s home. He plays with the Astoria Symphony, and played funk and gospel with the Christian Cultural Center Band. Terry has additional experience playing other musical genres including new music, hard rock, free improvisation, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, and Colombian music.

As a composer, he has collaborated and performed his own music and poetry with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and Splinter Reeds woodwind quintet in conjunction with faculty commissions from the Walden School Young Musicians Program in Dublin, New Hampshire. Terry has also written and arranged for the Christian Cultural Center Band and his own small jazz ensembles on several freelance projects. His pieces have been performed in New York City, Carmel Valley, California, and New Hampshire.

In addition to his versatile performance abilities, Terry also teaches students of all ages and economic backgrounds. Most notably would be his work with The Walden School Young Musicians Program as a faculty member, composition forum moderator, band leader, jazz and free improvisation instructor, coach for singer/songwriters, choral singer, and creative musical contributor on trombone and drums.

Some of his other adventures include teaching theory and performance ensembles at Frank Sinatra High School of the Arts, teaching jazz history and performance at Stony Brook University, teaching musical instruments and poetry/hip hop to children in the South Bronx and Far Rockaway for the Thrive Collective, and teaching general music to students at Clara Barton High school in Brooklyn. Terry also led improvisation workshops as an educational facilitator for The Coltrane Home, which is the organization that preserves the home of John and Alice Coltrane.

Terry is passionate about being an artist who is a husband and father in New York City, and lives in Queens with his equally accomplished wife, Rebekah Griffin Greene, their son Kayden and daughter Phoenix.

Staff & Assistant Director of Operations, Young Musicians Program

William Hawkins (b. 1997) is a composer, violist, dancer, and visual artist with a BA in Music from Brown University.  While in college, he found musical inspiration in problem-solving complex mechanisms of the physical world gained from engineering and science courses.  Now he finds inspiration in space exploration and our relationship with nature.