Faculty & Artists

At the encouragement of her mother, Cara Haxo begrudgingly attended Walden as a student in 2004. As soon as she arrived on campus, she immediately fell in love with everything about Walden and came back for another five summers. She is thrilled to return to Walden more recently as a faculty member and academic dean. Cara is the winner of the 2022 National Women’s Musical Festival Emerging Women Composers Competition. She was also awarded the 2019 International Alliance for Women in Music Libby Larsen Prize, the 2013 National Federation of Music Clubs Young Composers Award, and the 2013 IAWM Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prize. Her works have been premiered by the May Festival Youth Chorus, International Contemporary Ensemble, Quince Ensemble, and Splinter Reeds, amongst other ensembles.

 Cara earned her Ph.D. in Composition at the University of Oregon, where she worked as a Graduate Teaching Fellow in Music Theory. She also holds degrees from Butler University and The College of Wooster. She previously taught courses in composition and theory as an Adjunct Instructor of Music at Notre Dame College (Ohio), and private piano, theory, and composition lessons through the Butler Community Arts School in Indianapolis. This coming fall, she will serve as a Visiting Assistant Professor at The College of Wooster. When she is not composing, Cara enjoys baking desserts, going on long road trips, and hanging out with her cat, Pippin. For more information, please visit http://chaxomusic.com.

I am an oboist, singer, educator and composer, and do my best to avoid being boxed into any of these categories. I am currently completing a master’s degree in baroque oboe at the Juilliard School, and have performed with the Juilliard415 orchestra in Lincoln Center, Paris, New Zealand and San Francisco. I sing in the professional choir at St. James Episcopal Church in Manhattan as a mezzo-soprano. I am a music theory teaching assistant for Juilliard’s Evening Division, and previously served as oboe fellow for Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program (MAP) where I had the opportunity to design and teach advanced music seminars.

Before moving to New York I enjoyed life as a freelance musician in Seattle, singing at St. James Cathedral, teaching piano and composition at Puget Sounds Piano Academy, and teaching oboe for the Seattle Youth Symphony. I founded Les Chanterelles, a professional a cappella ensemble specializing in medieval and contemporary music, and performed in concerts presented by Early Music Seattle, Music at 9th and Stewart, and Tacoma Early Music. I gave numerous solo recitals, premiering my own compositions and other new works alongside classic repertoire.

Some of my favorite musical moments have been experimental, genre-bending collaborations: playing in a funk orchestra with jazz bassist Evan Flory-Barnes for his show “On Loving the Muse and Family,” playing with the Seattle Rock Orchestra, and collaborating with Jason Everett’s Deep Energy Orchestra in a fusion between Indian classical and prog rock. I have worked with people of various spiritual traditions, including as a soloist with the Medieval Women’s Choir, a season with the Seattle Jewish Choir, gospel music with St. Paul’s UMC in Brooklyn, new music composed for a Hare Krishna service, and monthly improvisations for Taizé (Christian mysticism).

I hold a MA in solo voice ensemble singing from the University of York (UK) and double bachelor’s degrees in neuroscience and oboe performance from Oberlin College and Conservatory. In my spare time I enjoy creative coding, 3D printing, vegetarian cooking and urban cycling.

Wistful, playful, or dreamy, Francesca Hellerman’s music seeks to transport audiences into the sonic environment it creates. Her work has been performed by the PRISM Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and the Walden School Players. Originally from Montreal, Canada, Francesca studied at the McGill Conservatory, where she was awarded the Kenneth Woodman Scholarship for her excellence in piano, theory and composition. She is currently a music major at Williams College, where she studies piano with Doris Stevenson and sings in the Concert and Chamber Choirs directed by Brad Wells. She also co-directs the education and outreach portions of Williams’ I/O Festival, an annual celebration of new music at the college.

In her spare time, Francesca enjoys cooking experiments, historical novels, and long walks surrounded by interesting sounds. After attending the Walden School Young Musicians Program for eight wonderful and transformative summers, she is thrilled to have returned to Walden as a staff member.

Lila Meretzky is a composer from New York City, currently based in New Haven, CT.  Lila works primarily in chamber, vocal, electronic, and electroacoustic mediums. Her work is often concerned with (the warping of) memory, language, and subjective experiences of time.  She enjoys collaborating with artists in other mediums, and has recently created music for the dance companies New Dialect, X-Contemporary Dance, and the Nashville Ballet.  She is a graduate of the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, where she co-founded a new music concert series called A Humming Under My Feet. The series, which Lila produced for three years featured live projections and collaborations with poets, and prioritized an open and welcome approach to the concert experience.

Her other pursuits include performing as a singer and pianist, teaching composition and musicianship, studying German, reading Yiddish poetry, and making noise on her laptop and accordion.  As a critic, her writings have been published on the arts blog ArtsNash and she has been featured on the radio at WXNA Nashville.  Lila is a current student in the masters program at the Yale School of Music.

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.

Michael Kropf is a composer whose work deals with hidden emotions and evocative places. He has collaborated with Marin Alsop, the Telegraph Quartet, the San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. 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.” The work was later described as “a brilliant, rapid fire stretch of perpetual motion,” by the SF Chronicle’s Joshua Kosman. Recent projects include a collaboration with the Apple Hill String Quartet, as well as a piano quartet for the 2018 Aspen Music Festival.

Michael completed his Master’s degree in Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 2016, where he won First Prize in the Highsmith Orchestral Composition Competition, the Bienial Art Song Composition Competition, and the Telegraph Quartet Composition Competition, as well as Third Prize in their Biennial Choral Competition. In 2014, his composition for chamber ensemble “Kinesthesia” received an honorable mention at the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers Awards.

He served as Co-Director of the Hot Air Music Festival, a daylong marathon of new music which takes place annually at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is also a Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Dynamic Music Festival, a two day concert-series in New York City focused on creating a dialogue between student composers from different schools in and around the Tri-State area. He currently teaches composition and musicianship at the Walden School in New Hampshire and the San Francisco Conservatory Pre-College.

Michael was born in Danbury, Connecticut and received his Bachelor of Music degree from New York University. His teachers and mentors have included David Conte, John Adams, Justin Dello Joio, Luboš Mrkvička, and Youngmi Ha. He will be beginning a doctoral degree in music composition at the University of Michigan this fall.

Nate Trier is a composer and producer, based just outside of New Haven, CT, who creates electronic music that features lyrical piano and accordion melodies over churning soundscapes of buzzing drones, fuzzy drums, and crackling static. He describes his music as “classical ambient beats,” and others have said it’s “quite engrossing” (KFFP) and “like looking into your soul” (Raighes Factory); the New Haven Independent dubbed him a “Rosetta Stone” for his ability to make experimental music accessible to listeners. His music has travelled worldwide: abstract visual artist Sergei Petrov used Trier’s music for installations in Zelenograd, Russia, and the 48th International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany distributed a recording of Trier’s fixed-media piece, “Serial Parameter Shift,” to participants. Additionally, Trier co-released a cassette of experimental ambient music with UK-based guitarist and modular synthesist encym. To date, Trier has released 8 collections of electronic music, including singles, EP’s, and albums (including two albums of 60-minute ambient drone compositions). Currently, Trier is releasing a new song every month in 2021.

Theo Trevisan (b. 1999) is a composer and bass-baritone about to start his senior year at Princeton University.  His compositions have many influences, including the Renaissance, algorithms, minimalism, and memes, and he primarily draws from 20th-21st century repertoire for voice.

As a child, Theo sang with the American Boychoir School, performing in over 30 states and South Korea; ensembles and conductors performed with include Alan Gilbert with the New York Philharmonic, Yannick Nezet-Seguin with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen with the Philharmonia Orchestra, and Michael Tilson Thomas with the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra.  Currently, Theo studies music composition, computer science, and electronic music performance at Princeton.  He studies composition with Dan Trueman and Dmitri Tymozcko; electronics with Jeff Snyder; voice with Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek; and conducting with Gabriel Crouch.  Festivals recently attended include the So Percussion Summer Festival and Collaborative Workshop, The Walden School’s Creative Musicians Retreat, and the International Music Festival of the Adriatic.

Theo’s music has been performed by a wide variety of ensembles and collaborators, including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, Antioch Chamber Ensemble, the Walden School Players, Harmonium Choral Society, DJ Sparr, and Soo Yeon Lyuh.  Currently, Theo sings in the Princeton Glee Club, Chamber Choir, and the Kaztenjammers (co-ed acapella group that he formerly directed), and performs with the Princeton Laptop Orchestra.  He also has contributed to software development for Dan Trueman’s bitKlavier app and Jeff Snyder’s Vocodec instrument.

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.