Young Musicians Program
Faculty & Staff

Project Manager

Douglas Hertz (b. 1993) is a composer, percussionist, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. He first became involved with The Walden School as a Young Musicians Program Student in 2010 and has since participated in the Creative Musicians Retreat and held both staff and faculty roles.

Hertz’s compositions have been heard around the United States, having been recently programmed by the Aries Composers Festival, Midwest Composers Symposium, PASIC, Nief Norf Summer Festival, Atlantic Music Festival, the Dynamic Music Festival, Bard College’s Music Alive series and the Deer Valley Music Festival. He has also held recent residencies with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music and Periapsis Music and Dance.

His music has been either performed or recorded by the University of Michigan Philharmonic Orchestra, Wet Ink Ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, American Symphony Orchestra, Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, Calidore String Quartet, Vanguard Reed Quintet, Up/Down Percussion Quartet, and BrassTaps Duo. He is also an avid collaborator, having worked recently with choreographer Al Evangelista, visual artist Lizzy Chiappini, and performance group, Call Your Mom.

Hertz holds a B.A. in music from Bard College a M.M. from the University of Michigan. His past teachers have included Evan Chambers, Bright Sheng, Kristin Kuster, George Tsontakis, Joan Tower, Kyle Gann, and Janet Weir.

https://www.douglashertzmusic.com/

Composer Eliza Brown attended The Walden School as a YMP student from 2000-2002, and has held many roles in the community in subsequent summers, including staff, faculty, and leadership team. Eliza’s compositions have been performed by leading interpreters of new music (including Ensemble Dal Niente, Spektral Quartet, ensemble recherche, International Contemporary Ensemble, Network for New Music, Ensemble SurPlus, and Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble), heard on stages throughout the USA and abroad, and released on the Navona and New Focus labels, among others.

Eliza’s music, described as “delicate, haunting, and introspective” by Symphony Magazine, is frequently intertextual, opening dialogues with pre-existing pieces of music, historical styles, field recordings, non-musical artworks, and other artifacts. It is also often interdisciplinary: Eliza has collaborated with practitioners of theater, dance, architecture, poetry, visual art, film, and the sciences, frequently taking on artistic and organizational roles in addition to “composer.” Building intentional, project-specific collaborative processes, with attention to the ethical and equity issues of artistic industries and infrastructures, is an essential part of Eliza’s practice. The monodrama The Body of the State, co-created with six women incarcerated at Indiana Women’s Prison, was commissioned and premiered by Ensemble Dal Niente in October 2017; current projects include Theorem, an interdisciplinary performance work in development with a collective of artists representing many fields, and The Listening Year, a work in progress for New Morse Code based on a year of weekly field recording at Indiana’s Big Walnut Creek. Recent commissioners include a.pe.ri.od.ic, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Spektral Quartet and Scrag Mountain Music, Philadelphia Sinfonia, pianist Clare Longendyke, and Classical Music Indy.

Eliza is an Associate Professor of Music at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN, and was recently awarded DePauw’s 2023 Fisher Fellowship for The Listening Year. Eliza holds a B.Mus. in composition from the University of Michigan and a D.M.A. in composition from Northwestern University.

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.

Choral Director, Young Musicians Program

Kari Francis (she/her) is a vocalist, arranger, and choral music educator who has shared the stage with Imogen Heap, competed on Season 3 of NBC’s The Sing-Off with Kinfolk 9, and can be heard beatboxing on Grammy Award-winning pianist-composer Cory Smythe’s album Accelerate Every Voice. Currently a choral conducting doctoral student in the Sacred Music program at the University of Notre Dame, her past teaching includes choral arranging, ear training, music theory, and directing vocal ensembles at the College of Saint Rose, Mannes School of Music, CUNY Hunter College, and Teachers College Columbia University. Kari was previously a conducting fellow with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City and has taught in NYC public schools as a Midori & Friends vocal teaching artist. Her writings on contemporary a cappella have been published by GIA Music and NATS, and she frequently leads workshops on arranging, vocal percussion, and group vocal improvisation at music festivals and conferences around the world. Kari holds degrees in music education from the Eastman School of Music, Teachers College Columbia University, and music theory/composition from the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests include choral improvisation, collaborative learning, and popular music in the choral classroom.

Director of Composers Forums

Kittie Cooper is a composer, performer, and educator based in Charlottesville, Virginia. She makes art that incorporates feminism and explores the spectrum between silliness and seriousness. Her work has been called “highly original and wonderfully fun”. She is interested in text and graphic scores, improvisation, and DIY electronic instruments. She has performed and presented at a variety of festivals and conferences across the United States, and performs locally in Charlottesville as a guitarist, electronic musician, and improviser.

Kittie’s music has been commissioned and performed by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Ensemble Dal Niente, Splinter Reeds, Popebama, and Ghost Ensemble. She serves as Director of Composers Forums and Faculty for The Walden School Young Musicians Program and staff for the Creative Musicians Retreat. Next year, she will begin pursuing an MFA in interdisciplinary arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. She holds a BM from Northwestern University in music education and guitar performance, and an MEd in special education from George Mason University. In her spare time, she enjoys taking care of the stray cats in her neighborhood.

Lila Meretzky is a composer, educator, and visual artist born and raised in New York City.  She works primarily in chamber, vocal, electronic, and electroacoustic mediums, as well as in music for dance, film, and installation.  Her work is often concerned with (the warping of) memory and language, and subjective experiences of time.  Recent and ongoing collaborations include new works for the icarus Quartet, Omer Quartet, and the Yale Philharmonia, the soundtrack for the eco-documentary A Climate of Anxiety, and scores for the dance companies New Dialect, X-Contemporary Dance, and the Nashville Ballet.  Lila 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. She is currently working on her MMA in composition at the Yale School of Music.  Her other pursuits include performing as a singer and pianist, 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.  As an educator, she has taught composition at the Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire and with Yale’s Music in Schools Initiative, and musicianship at the W.O. Smith Music School in Nashville, Tennessee. Paper collage is her primary visual medium, and her work has been featured in Off Latch Press’ inaugural Off Latch Zine.

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.

Faculty, Young Musicians Program

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;” others have described it as  “quite engrossing” (KFFP) and “like looking into your soul” (Raighes Factory). 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 attendees. Trier has released several collections of electronic music, including singles, EP’s, and albums.

Theo Trevisan (b. 1999) is a composer and bass-baritone based in Los Angeles from New Jersey.  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 with world-class conductors and ensembles.  Theo attended Princeton University for his undergraduate studies, majoring in composition and minoring in computer science and consort singing.  He studied composition with Jeff Snyder, Dan Trueman, Dmitri Tymozcko, and Donnacha Dennehy; voice with Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek; and conducting with Gabriel Crouch.  He is currently pursuing his Masters in composition at USC Thornton, where he studies with Ted Hearne.

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, Princeton University Glee Club and Chamber Choir, Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), DJ Sparr, David Friend, Matthew Gold, and Soo Yeon Lyuh.  He has sung with the USC Chamber Singers, the choir of St. James in the City LA, Gallicantus, the Princeton Glee Club and Chamber Choir, and the Princeton Katzenjammers (mixed voice acapella group).  He also has contributed to software development for Dan Trueman’s bitKlavier app and Jeff Snyder’s Vocodec instrument.

Theo’s other interests include bad puns, obscure history, vegetarian cooking, skiing, and strategy games.  Theo has been a part of the Walden community for many years: he attended the Young Musicians Program from 2014-2017, the Creative Musicians Retreat from 2019-2021, and he worked on staff at the Young Musicians Program from 2019-2022.  He is thrilled to be on faculty this summer!  Learn more at theotrevisan.com

William Hawkins (b. 1997) is a composer, violist, dancer, and visual artist with a BA in Music from Brown University.  While in college, he found musical inspiration in problem-solving complex mechanisms of the physical world gained from engineering and science courses.  Now he finds inspiration in space exploration and our relationship with nature.