Faculty & Artists

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.

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.

Violinist/violist, composer, and visual artist Leah Asher is an avid performer of contemporary music and creator of new artistic works. Leah is a member of The Rhythm Method string quartet, the violin-piano duo Aether Eos, and co-creator of MEANINGLESS WORK with Nicolee Kuester. She has been featured as a concerto soloist with NOSO Sinfoniettaen and Oberlin’s Contemporary Music Ensemble. Leah formerly served as solo violist of NOSO Sinfoniettaen and co-principal viola of the Arctic Philharmonic. She regularly performs with other New York-based ensembles such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea ensemble, and Shattered Glass. As a composer, Leah has been commissioned by ensembles including andPlay, Chartreuse, Periapsis, NorthArc Percussion Group, The Great Learning Orchestra, Du.0, and solo artists such as Meaghan Burke, Tristan McKay, and Jennifer Torrence. Leah released her debut solo album, Retreat into Afters, on SCRIPTS records in 2018.  

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.

Luke was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, but grew up and currently lives in Wichita Falls, Texas. In the fall, Luke will be entering his Senior year at Texas Tech University, where he majors in Music Education.  He hopes to become a teacher one day and share his passion for music with his students.  At Texas Tech, Luke plays Viola in the University Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Bravura, and New Music Ensemble.  He has played with the Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra as well. Luke also works for the Texas Tech String Project. String Project is an organization funded by Texas Tech University that allows string music education students to teach beginner string players. Luke enjoys listening to a wide range of music and spending time with good friends.  His hobbies include collecting records, discovering different coffee shops, and watching sports.  Luke is looking forward to a fun and exciting summer at Walden!

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 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.

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.

Sarah Riskind is the Director of Choral Activities/Assistant Professor of Music at Eureka College in central Illinois, where she conducts choral and instrumental ensembles and teaches composition, musicianship, and music appreciation courses. In her nine summers at Walden, she has shared her specialties in choral composition and improvisation, arrangements of Judeo-Spanish melodies, and Renaissance polyphony.

Among her original works are Jewish and Judeo-Christian music, secular pieces with improvisatory elements, and frequent settings with string obbligato parts. In February 2020, her Psalm of the Sky for tenor-bass choir, violin, and piano was premiered by St. Xavier High School’s Ensemble X as part of the Creative Commissions Project through the University of Cincinnati. Other recent premieres include the tenor-bass arrangement of Oseh Shalom by the Appalachian State Glee Club in April 2019, the Robert Frost setting Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter by the Pacifica Choirs Interludes Ensemble in March 2019, and several arrangements of Judeo-Spanish melodies by the Seattle Jewish Chorale and Sarah’s own ensemble Las Kantaderas del Noroeste in November/December 2018. She has also written for the Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Ensemble Dal Niente as part of the Walden School Faculty Commissioning Project. Several of her works are featured in the Project Encore catalogue of contemporary choral music.

Sarah sings soprano and accompanies voices as a violinist/fiddler and improviser. 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

Trevor Danko is an artist based out of New Jersey and Philadelphia. From a very young age music has always been a part of his life, and is the art form he feels most passionately about.  His first instrument was the piano, followed by the guitar, then the bass, then the drums. Most of these instruments were self taught. Throughout his schooling, he has always participated in choral groups, both large and small, as well as musical theatre and theatre arts. Shortly after beginning to play the drums, he joined his school’s jazz band. In addition to participating in school music programs, Trevor also played in multiple bands with friends of his growing up, usually as the bassist or the drummer. Throughout high school, he took many opportunities to perform in student showcases and student-organized music festivals with fellow musicians.

About four years ago, Trevor started composing his own original music, and began songwriting.  In 2017, he began by releasing a few original songs on soundcloud, then self-released his debut single on streaming platforms in the summer of 2018.  A follow up single was released the next year, as well as his debut EP, which came out in November of 2019.  Since then, Trevor has continued to compose his own music, while working in collaborative partnerships with other producers and musicians in an effort to release a larger body of work.  He has begun to teach himself electronic music production, and hopes to one day fully produce his own music, and also be able to produce other artists’ work.  

Other interests of Trevor’s include philosophy, being outdoors, dancing, making visual art, and learning about new ways to be creative.