Concerts and residencies bring artists of the
highest caliber to The Walden School
Through the performance of diverse music, guest artists play an active role in helping stimulate students’ creativity. Guest performers have included members of International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Quince Ensemble, Warp Trio, Horszowski Trio, Hub New Music, Friction Quartet, TAK Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, PRISM Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, Dave Eggar, Peter Evans, Amadi Azikiwe, Aakash Mittal, Julia Bruskin and Aaron Wunsch, Eric Huebner, Tamsin Waley-Cohen, and Splinter Reeds.
Visiting artists are musicians and musical creators who come to Walden to perform concerts, give students feedback on their work, teach workshops, premiere student works, and participate in community events. They hail from some of the most renowned performing ensembles in the world. You can find a more complete list of Walden’s recent visiting artists here).
Each year during festival week, we invite a distinguished composer-in-residence to work with 5-week students. Walden also has its own in-house ensemble for festival week called The Walden School Players, a chamber ensemble of professional musicians who rehearse and perform students’ compositions on the Festival Week Composers Forums.
Visiting Artists at Walden’s 2025 Young Musicians Program
Talujon, Faculty Commissioning Ensemble
Described by the New York Times as possessing an “edgy, unflagging energy,” Talujon has committed itself to the growth of contemporary percussion music through diverse performance, commissioning, educational, and outreach activities.
Highlights of Talujon’s recent engagements include appearances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, Bang on a Can’s Marathon and Long Play Festivals, Carnegie Hall, ISSUE Project Room, Roulette, Miller Theatre, and New York Historical Society. International performances include Taipei’s Lantern Festival and Italy’s Sound Res Festival. In addition to its diverse performance schedule, Talujon has conducted residencies, clinics, and master classes at institutions across the US. Collaborators include Dewa Alit, Nick Brooke, Victoria Cheah, Chien Yin Chen, Alvin Lucier, Paula Matthusen, Eric Moe, Mathew Rosenblum, Ralph Shapey, Henry Threadgill, Ushio Torikai, Amy Williams, Julia Wolfe, and Christian Wolff.
Talujon partners with New York City Public Schools and the Midori and Friends organization to produce educational programming across New York City’s five boroughs. The ensemble’s playing can be heard on the Cantaloupe, Tzadik, Unseen Worlds, Another Timbre, New World, Bridge, Albany, and Capstone record labels.
Talujon’s concert season is made possible with support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University.
International Contemporary Ensemble
Now in its third decade, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is a multidisciplinary collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to building and innovating collaborative environments in order to inspire audiences to reimagine how they experience contemporary music and sound. The Ensemble creates a mosaic musical ecosystem as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), honoring the diversity of human experience and expression by commissioning, developing, recording, and performing the works of living artists in “a mission worth following” (I Care If You Listen).
The Walden School Players
All distinguished musicians and specialists in contemporary music, the Walden School Players share their talent and wealth of experience in contemporary music with the Walden community each summer during the course of a two-week residency. Although the roster changes somewhat from year to year, several of the Players have been returning to Walden for many summers and have formed lasting relationships with students, faculty, and staff.
While in residence at Walden, the Players work closely with student composers in readings and rehearsals, giving feedback as students prepare their pieces for Festival Week. Then, over the course of three Festival Week Composers Forums, they perform students’ pieces. In addition to their work with students, the Players present a concert of modern and contemporary chamber music in an event that is always a highlight of Walden’s concert series.
The 2025 Walden School Players are Laura Cocks (flute), Erica Dicker (violin), Zachary Good (clarinet), Kyra Sims (horn), Mabel Kwan (piano), Dennis Sullivan II (percussion), and Chris Wild (cello).
Stay tuned for upcoming announcements of more artists at the Young Musicians Program 2025!
“I’ve been absolutely blown away by all of your works, your individual voices that I’ve heard. To me you’re like a firmament of stars, which has no limit to its potential—each one unique and brilliant. I feel the world really needs you and your passion for new music, and it gives me hope that you’re going to be going out there sharing that passion.”
–Kati Agócs, Composer-in-Residence, Young Musicians Program 2019
Summer 2025
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