DUBLIN — Learn. Improvise. Compose. Listen.

Those are the goals of 56 students attending this summer’s five-week-long young musicians program at the Walden School, based on the campus of the Dublin School. Since the last week in June, they’ve been taking classes in musicianship and composition, jazz, computer music, music history. And they’ve each been working on a composition that will be performed this week during the school’s Festival Week Composers Forum concerts.

“Eclectic is a word that comes to mind,” says Seth Brenzel, executive director of the Walden School, when asked to describe the kind of music that will be heard at the free concerts. “It’s concert music, mostly. Some is very tonal, some avant-garde. Some will be vocal music and some using computers. ... It’s expressive. Our students don’t have to write a certain kind of music. What they write is informed by their backgrounds.”

Students come from all over the world, Brenzel says — Mumbai, Tokyo, Lithuania as well as the nearby towns of Temple and Peterborough.

Sam Pennington of Peterborough, who will be a junior at ConVal High School this fall, has been working on a piece titled “Bosque” intended to evoke the experience of being in a forest at night. It’s written for violin, viola, cello, bass clarinet, flute and percussion — “a highly percussive piece” is how Sam describes it.

Kaeli Mogg, a student from San Francisco, says the piece she’s composed is “pretty different.” It calls for electronic music, a narrator and dancers and features three movements: triangle, oblong and square. Kaeli wrote poetry to be recited along with the electronic music for each shape, and dancers will improvise their movements based on directions she provided.

Kaeli is at Walden for the fourth year. She said she’s been exposed to “a huge variety of awesome music and musicians.” The music students create is performed by the Walden School Players, a group of professional musicians who offer feedback to the students.
“It’s really amazing what we can learn,” Kaeli says, “and we’ve heard some really cool concerts.”

Her previous compositions at Walden were professionally recorded, which Kaeli says was a great opportunity for her to build a portfolio of work as she applied to colleges. She’ll be attending the Oberlin Conservatory of Music this fall.

Walden was founded in 1972 in Vermont by Grace Newsom Cushman, a longtime educator who sought to develop a new approach that concentrated on helping student compose music.

“When kids are 6 or 7, they write poetry,” Brenzel says. “They’ll be painting and drawing. Why shouldn’t they be writing music?”

The Walden School became “in residence” on the grounds of the Dublin School in 1983, Brenzel says.

Students and faculty live in the Dublin School dormitories and it’s the only program at the campus during the summer.

“For us, it’s a retreat from daily life,” says Brenzel. “It’s rural, it’s beautiful, and it’s a technology free zone.” Students are able to focus on their classwork, their compositions and also their singing.

“Everyone sings, even if they’ve never been a singer,” says Brenzel. The students’ annual end-of session Choral Concert will be held at the Peterborough Town House on Friday.
Although many of the Walden students plan to pursue their education at schools like Oberlin, Brenzel said the intent of the program is not necessarily to prepare students for a career in music.

“The point is to focus on the creative act,” he said. “ We think it’s a success if they leave Walden having fallen in love with music.”

Composers Forum concerts featuring the world premieres of the pieces written by Walden students and moderated by this year’s composer-in-residence, Paul Moravec, will be held tonight and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Louise Shonk Kelly Recital Hall on the Dublin School campus.

The school’s choral concert on Friday will be at the Peterborough Town House at 7:30 p.m. and will feature works of the English Renaissance, American folk music and a choral work by Moravec.

All three concerts are free.

This article was published in the July 26, 2011 edition of the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript