Creative Musicians Retreat Faculty & Staff

Faculty, Creative Musicians Retreat

Alex Christie makes acoustic and electronic music in many forms. His music has been called “vibrant”, “interesting, I guess,” and responsible for “ruin[ing] my day.” He enjoys collaborating with artists in all fields and is particularly interested the design of power structures, systems of intervention, and absurdist bureaucracy in composition. Alex is the founder and co-curator of the multidisciplinary arts series SOLOS (Charlottesville, VA) and the program coordinator for Synths for Beginners, a creative workshop series that provides free arts education and music equipment to Charlottesville youth. He is also a member of the bands Trash Cats, Altra, and Ear Infection, all of which are really great.

Recently, Alex’s work has explored the ecology of performance in intermedia art and interactive electronic music. Through real-time audio processing, instrument building, video, lighting, and theater, Alex expands performance environments to offer multiple lenses through which the audience can experience the work. Alex has performed and presented at a variety of conferences and festivals whose acronyms combine to spell nicedinsaucesfeeeemmmmmmfogascabsplotnort.

Alex began his compositional career many years ago as a student at Walden’s Young Musicians Program where he now serves as faculty, Director of Electronic Music, and an academic dean. He holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, Mills College, and the University of Virginia where he is currently completing a PhD in Composition and Computer Technologies (CCT). Other interests include baseball and geometric shapes.

https://alexchristie.space/

Faculty, Creative Musicians Retreat

Composer and electric guitarist D. J. Sparr, who Gramophone recently 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, all-Kenneth Fuchs recording with JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2011, Sparr was named one of NPR listeners’ favorite 100 composers. 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 awards from BMI, New Music USA, and the League of Composers/ISCM. Sparr is a faculty member at the famed Walden School’s Creative Musicians Retreat in Dublin, New Hampshire. His composition works and guitar performances appear on Naxos, Innova Recordings, Albany, & Centaur Records.

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 for a “captive” audience 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. He attended composition programs including the Young Musicians Retreat at The Walden School. 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, Nannette the hound dog, and Bundini the boxer. D. J. Sparr’s music is published by Bill Holab Music.

Visit D. J. Sparr (djsparr.com) for more information

Faculty, Creative Musicians Retreat

Called a “bright wom[a]n with big ideas” (Souls in Action), Colorado-based composer Loretta K. Notareschi (b. 1977) seeks to create “compassion” (303 Magazine) and connection through her “powerful” (The Denver Post) and “deeply personal” (5280 Magazine) music. Whether writing for string quartet or symphony orchestra, church congregations or classical ukulele players, she seeks to “connec[t] with the audience” (303 Magazine) and move listeners with music of meaning.

Born in Canton, Ohio and raised in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Notareschi is a professor of music at Regis University and a summer faculty member of The Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat. She received master’s and doctoral degrees in composition from the University of California at Berkeley, a bachelor’s of music in composition from the University of Southern California, and the General Diploma from the Zoltàn Kodàly Pedagogical Institute of Music in Kecskemèt, Hungary, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. Notareschi’s music has been performed in the United States, Europe, and South America by groups as diverse as the Spektral Quartet, the Sacred and Profane Chamber Chorus, the Duo Montagnard, The Playground Ensemble, the Boulder Symphony, and the former Ensemble Eleven. She has received awards and grants from the Cincinnati Camerata, IronWorks Percussion Duo, the American Composers Forum, and the GALA Choruses, and in October 2016, she was a TEDxMileHigh speaker. Her primary teachers in composition have included Morten Lauridsen, Erica Muhl, Rick Lesemann, Cindy Cox, and Jorge Liderman, and her music is published by Disegni Music, Friedrich Hofmeister, and Bachovich.

Faculty, Creative Musicians Retreat

Sam Pluta is a Baltimore-based composer, laptop improviser, electronics performer, and sound artist. Though his work has a wide breadth, his central focus is on using the laptop as a performance instrument capable of sharing the stage with groups ranging from new music ensembles to world-class improvisers. By creating unique interactions of electronics, instruments, and sonic spaces, Pluta’s vibrant musical universe fuses the traditionally separate sound worlds of acoustic instruments and electronics, creating sonic spaces which envelop the audience and resulting in a music focused on visceral interaction of instrumental performers with reactive computerized sound worlds. As a composer of instrumental music, Sam has written works for Wet Ink Ensemble, the New York Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, the Warsaw Autumn Festival, Yarn/Wire, Spektral Quartet, and many other groups. His compositions range from solo instrumental works to pieces for ensemble with electronics to compositions for large ensemble and orchestra. Sam is the Technical Director for the Wet Ink Ensemble, a group for which he is a member composer as well as principal electronics performer. As a performer of chamber music with Wet Ink and other groups, in addition to his own works, Sam has performed and premiered works by Peter Ablinger, Katharina Rosenberger, George Lewis, Alvin Lucier, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Alex Mincek, Kate Soper, and Eric Wubbels, among others. As an improviser, Sam has collaborated with some of the finest creative musicians in the world, including Peter Evans, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Craig Taborn, Ingrid Laubrock, Anne La Berge, and George Lewis. With these various groups, he has toured Europe and America and performed at major festivals and venues, such as the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, the Moers and Donaueshingen Festivals in Germany, Bimhuis in Amsterdam, and The Vortex in London. Dr. Pluta studied composition and electronic music at Columbia University, where he received his DMA in 2012. He is Associate Professor of Computer Music and Music Engineering Technology at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he directs the Peabody Computer Music Studios. From 2011-15 he directed the Electronic Music Studio at Manhattan School of Music and from 2015-2020 he directed the CHIME Studio at the University of Chicago. Sam has been on faculty at The Walden School since 2001.

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

Technical Director, Creative Musicians Retreat

Ted Moore (he / him) is a composer, improviser, and intermedia artist whose work fuses sonic, visual, physical, and acoustic elements, often incorporating technology to create immersive, multidimensional experiences.

After completing a PhD in Music Composition at the University of Chicago, Ted served as a postdoctoral Research Fellow in Creative Coding at the University of Huddersfield as part of the FluComa project, where he investigated the creative potential of machine learning algorithms and taught workshops on how artists can use machine learning in their creative music practice. Ted has continued offering workshops around the world on machine learning and creativity including at the University of Pennsylvania, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University, and Music Hackspace in London.

Ted’s music has been presented by leading cultural institutions such as MassMoCA, South by Southwest, The Walker Art Center, and National Sawdust and presented by ensembles such as Talea Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, the [Switch~ Ensemble], and the JACK Quartet. Ted has held artist residences with the Phonos Foundation in Barcelona, the Arts, Sciences, & Culture Initiative at the University of Chicago, and the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) in Amsterdam. His sound art installations combine DIY electronics, embedded technologies, and spatial sound have been featured around the world including at the American Academy in Rome and New York University.

Computational thinking and digital tools enrich all aspects of Ted’s work, which has been described as “an impressive achievement both artistically and technically” (VitaMN). Creative coding spans the aural, visual, and procedural aspects of his practice revealing musicality in data and computation. Using tools such as SuperCollider, Max, C++, openFrameworks, Python, and  computer vision and machine learning algorithms, Ted codes custom software for generative composition and live performance that intimately connect gesture and form across various media.

Ranging from concert stages to dirty basements, Ted is a frequent improviser on electronics and has appeared with dozens of instrumental collaborators including on releases for Carrier Records, Mother Brain Records, Noise Pelican Records, and Avid Sound Records. Described as “frankly unsafe” by icareifyoulisten.com, performances on his custom, large-scale software instrument for live sound processing and synthesis, enables an improvisational voice rooted in free jazz, noise music, and musique concrète.

Ted currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut, but might also be found hiking in West Rock State Park or on the side of a mountain in Summit County Colorado.