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.

A native of New England, Andrew Bobker grew up in Brunswick, Maine, and currently studies music and German at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. He is a musician and an occasional composer.

A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Charlie Dees attended the Walden School Young Musician’s Program from 2002 to 2005. Growing up, he studied violin and composition along with dabbling in piano. After taking a hiatus from music, he co-founded the Missouri Quizbowl Alliance, which organized a statewide trivia circuit for high schoolers, and coached a local high school’s team. One day he picked up his violin again, realized that he sounded awful, and vowed to never sound that bad again, leading him to reboot his music studies. Ultimately, Charlie moved to Chicago and enrolled at Harold Washington College in 2014.

In 2015, he was accepted to transfer to Columbia University in New York, where he is currently pursuing degrees in music and history. Charlie studied violin with Tiberius Klausner and Richard Rood, and composition with Kris Bartmann and many legendary Walden faculty. Most importantly, he is super stoked to be back to Walden for his first summer in over a decade.

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.

Composer Cody Wright’s music has been performed at La Schola Cantorum in Paris, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall in Boston and at CAMI Hall in New York City, by distinguished performers such as the Flux Quartet, the yesaroun’ Duo, and pianist Sergey Schepkin. His work “Daydream” for tenor saxophone, vibraphone, and recorded material, was originally written for a Walden debut by the yesaroun’ Duo, and has since become Cody’s most widely performed work, having been performed on four continents.

Mr. Wright graduated cum laude with a B.M. degree in Composition from New England Conservatory in Boston, and a M.M. degree in Composition from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He completed a year of graduate studies in Composition New Media at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, and he is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda. His principal teachers have included Alan Fletcher, Leonardo Balada, Morton Subotnick, and James Tenney for composition, and F. John Adams, Denis Colwell and Robert Page for conducting. He has also studied with Philip Lasser, Lee Hyla, and Michael Gandolfi. Mr. Wright previously served on the composition faculty of the Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire and was awarded the 2003 Patricia Plude Faculty Fellowship for excellence in teaching.

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

Composer Eliza Brown attended The Walden School as a YMP student from 2000-2002 and has since returned for many years as a staff and faculty member. Eliza’s music, described as “delicate, haunting, [and] introspective” by Symphony Magazine, has been performed around the world by leading new music ensembles including Ensemble Dal Niente, ensemble recherche, Network for New Music, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Spektral Quartet, ICE, Wet Ink Ensemble, Wild Rumpus New Music Collective, and PRISM Saxophone Quartet. Deeply interested in the relationships between music and the other arts and humanities, Eliza has also engaged in interdisciplinary collaborations with practitioners of theater, dance, architecture, painting, and film, frequently taking on other artistic roles in these collaborations in addition to “composer.”

When not at Walden, Eliza teaches music theory and composition as an Assistant Professor of Music at DePauw University (Greencastle, IN). Eliza has also taught at Columbia College Chicago and Northwestern University, where she earned her DMA in composition in 2015. elizabrown.net

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

Russian-born Israeli composer, violin, viola, bandoneon and accordion player, Moshe Shulman (b.1978) holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in composition from the Jerusalem Academy of Music, and a PhD in composition from the NY State University at Buffalo, studying with Mark Kopytman, David Felder, and Johannes Schollhorn. His music has been performed in Israel, Canada, United States, Russia, France and Hungary with various ensembles such as Norrbotten NEO and Juventas New Music Ensemble, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Meridian Brass Quintet, Slee Sinfonietta (Buffalo, NY), International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and Arditti Quartet.

As a student he received numerous awards, scholarships and assistantships from Israel and the US. He received a 2015 Fromm Foundation Commission from Harvard University. In summer 2009, Moshe won 3rd prize for “Construction 3” at the Jurgenson Contemporary Music International Competition in Moscow.

Moshe is a performer of classical/contemporary music, Argentine tango, klezmer, and Gypsy music. He also coaches soccer and plays in amateur leagues in WNY. In 2012, Shulman led the Baires Klezmer Orchestra in Buenos Aires, Argentina and formed Buffalo Tango Orkestra.

Currently he is on the Music Faculty at the University at Buffalo and is a composer in residence with Commonwealth Lyric Theater in Boston, MA, since 2009.

www.mosheshulman.com

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.

Academic Dean, Young Musicians Program

The music of composer, oboist, and installation artist Sky Macklay (b. 1988) explores bold contrasts, theatrical elements, audible processes, humor, and the physicality of sound. Her works have been performed by ensembles such as ICE, Yarn/Wire, Wet Ink Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Hexnut, and The Da Capo Chamber Players. Her piece Dissolving Bands, an abstract orchestral reflection on the American Revolutionary War, was commissioned and premiered by the Lexington (MA) Symphony  and was the winner of the 2013 Leo Kaplan award, the top prize in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. In 2015, her sonic and kinetic installation of inflatable harmonica-playing robots, Harmonibots, received the Ruth Anderson Prize commission from The International Alliance for Women in Music. She has also been commissioned by The New York Virtuoso Singers and the Jerome Fund for New Music. Her string quartet Many Many Cadences, recorded on Spektral Quartet’s newest album, also received an ASCAP award.

Originally from Waseca, Minnesota, Sky is currently pursuing her D.M.A. in composition at Columbia University in NYC where she studies with Georg Friedrich Haas, George Lewis, and Fred Lerdahl. As a 2015-17 Composers and the Voice fellow with American Opera Projects, Sky is currently writing an opera set inside a woman’s uterus. Sky first joined the Walden community through the Teacher Training Institute in 2009, and she has taught for the Young Musicians Program every summer since 2010. Some of Sky’s favorite things about Walden include sharing the summer with 70 best friends, helping young composers bring their music to life, and dancing to Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, and Michael Jackson all in the same night.

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.

Choral Director, Creative Musicians Retreat

Award-winning conductor, composer and teacher Thomas Colohan has been the Artistic Director of the Washington Master Chorale since its founding in 2009. The Washington Post has acclaimed Colohan’s work with the Master Chorale as “skillfully wrought and moving.” He has led choruses at Carnegie Hall, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington National Cathedral, The Library of Congress, Prague’s Rudolphinum Concert Hall, and the Stephansdom in Vienna.  Colohan is active as a guest conductor, teacher and clinician on both the East and West coasts.  In his choral/orchestral engagements he has conducted members of the Prague Radio Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, the San Jose Symphony, the California Chamber Symphony, and the Richmond Symphony.  He has earned numerous honors, including regular recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He has twice been the recipient of a Choralis Foundation Washington Area Choral Excellence Award.

Before coming to the Washington Master Chorale, Colohan served as Music Director for All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, DC, Director of Choral Activities at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, Music Director of the Santa Clara Chorale, and Founder and Artistic Director of the James River Singers in Richmond, Virginia. His teachers have included renowned choral musicians such as Robert Shaw, Dale Warland, Morten Lauridsen, Helmut Rilling, Donald McCullough, and William Dehning. A lyric baritone who maintains an active voice studio, Mr. Colohan has sung professionally with the Washington Bach Consort and on Public Television’s “Great Performances” series at the Kennedy Center with the Washington Opera Chorus. He holds a Master of Music in Choral Music from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

Photo credit: Rhianna Victoria Nissen

William Hawkins (b. 1997) is a composer, violinist, dancer, and visual artist at Brown University. Hawkins has had works performed by chamber groups including the American Modern Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, the Momenta Quartet, the Neave Trio, the Walden School Players, and violinist Nigel Armstrong. His work has also been presented at the Mostly Modern Festival, Atlantic Music Festival, the Walden Creative Musician’s Retreat, the Eastern Division Festival’s Young Composer’s Event, and the NEC contemporary music festival. Hawkins currently studies composition with Wang Lu and Eric Nathan; in the past he has worked with Rodney Lister, Shawn Jaeger, and, through master-classes, John Harbison and Michael Daugherty.

When not composing, Hawkins can be found practicing violin for local performances, singing in the Brown University Chorus, drawing, and dancing hip-hop and Latin-dance styles. He is pursuing a major in music composition but finds much inspiration from the problem-solving skills and knowledge of the physical world gained from engineering and the sciences.