Administration

Seth Brenzel, Executive Director, has been associated with The Walden School for more than 20 years. He was a student at Walden for six summers, and since 1994, has served the School as a staff member, faculty member, Director of Operations, and from 1996-2003 as the School’s Associate Director. In 2003, he succeeded Patricia Plude as Walden’s Executive Director. He has served on the boards of The Walden School, Swarthmore College, and Earplay, a San Francisco-based new music ensemble. He currently serves as Past-President of the Swarthmore College Alumni Association. Seth has also served on the Development Council for the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.

Seth received his B.A., with degrees in Music and Political Science, from Swarthmore College, and received an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. His past employers have included Deloitte & Touche, the San Francisco Symphony, and Visual Sciences. He sings tenor with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, with which he has sung since 1995. When not in New Hampshire, Seth lives in San Francisco.

Brad Evans, Office Manager, helps keep the office running smoothly, and has been apart of the Walden community since attending Walden’s Teacher Training Institute in August of 2006. In addition to his duties at Walden, Brad also enjoys working for the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and Operations Department. Aside from his work in these two organizations he is an active member in, and advocate for, The American Partnership for Eosinophilic Disorders. Before moving to San Francisco in 2006, he earned a trombone performance degree from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. While studying music at IU, he also spent three years in various administrative music education positions.

Malcolm Gaines, Database Manager, administers The Walden School's growing database and helps coordinate recruitment and development projects. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology-Alameda, and received his B.A. in psychology and religion from the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He maintains a psychotherapy practice in the San Francisco Bay area, and is the Director of Intern Training at the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center. Since 1996, he has been an active member of the Grammy Award-winning San Francisco Symphony Chorus. Malcolm's association with The Walden School began in 1997. He lives in San Francisco and enjoys singing, cooking, and traveling.

Esther Landau, Director of Development, coordinates fundraising and development efforts for The Walden School. Prior to her arrival at Walden, Esther was the Managing Director for Citywinds, a critically acclaimed new music wind quintet which commissioned and premiered more than 100 new works for winds. Esther received her B.M. in Flute Performance from the Oberlin Conservatory and her M.M. from the San Francisco Conservatory. She is a passionate advocate for new music, and has had the privilege of working directly with such composers as Luciano Berio, Elliott Carter, and Chen Yi. With more than two decades of teaching under her belt, Esther currently teaches flute lessons privately and through the San Francisco Conservatory's Preparatory Division. Esther enjoys folk dancing and is the president of her local International Folkdance club. Esther lives in San Francisco with her partner Caroline Pincus and their expressive daughter Ruby.

Tom Lopez, Director, Computer Music Program, teaches at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, where he holds the title of Associate Professor of Computer Music and Digital Arts. Tom has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, the Knight Foundation, the Disney Foundation, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, and a Fulbright Fellowship as composer-in-residence at the Centre International de Recherche Musical in Nice, France. He has appeared at festivals and conferences around the world as a guest lecturer and composer. Tom is on the board of directors of the Living Music Foundation, has served on the executive committee of SCI (Society of Composers, Inc.), and was president of the Texas Computer Musicians Network. He has been a resident artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Copland House, Villa Montalvo, and Djerassi. His compositions have received critical acclaim and peer recognition, including a Grant for Young Composers from ASCAP and CD releases by Vox Novus, SCI, and SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States). His music has been performed around the world and throughout the United States, including at The Kennedy Center.

Caroline Mallonée, Assistant Academic Dean, and Director, Composers Forums, has been on the faculty of The Walden School for ten summers. Carrie has written vocal, instrumental, electroacoustic, microtonal and computer music that has been performed in the United States, Mexico, Italy, England, Wales and the Netherlands. She has also written two operas and music for film. She has recently been in residence at the MacDowell Colony and at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Carrie holds degrees from Harvard University, The Yale School of Music and Duke University, and she was a Fulbright scholar to the Netherlands in 2004.

Carrie is active as a violinist: she is a member of pulsoptional, a sextet and composers’ collective based in Durham, NC, whose first album was released in April. She is also a founding member of Glissando bin Laden and his Musichideen, a quartet based in New York City that performs improvised electroacoustic microtonal music.

Molly Pindell, Director of Operations, has been associated with Walden for 10 years. She has served in a variety of capacities: as a staff member and administrative assistant, as Director of Operations for 7 summers, and most recently as a member of Walden’s Board of Directors. A native of the Monadnock region, Molly spent the last two years in Boulder, CO, where she worked at Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy making cheese and playing surrogate mother to approximately 100 goat kids. In June Molly moved to Stowe, VT, where she plans to start a goat dairy of her own. Molly also writes about food and farming professionally; her recent publications have appeared in 5280 magazine, Boulder Weekly, Colby magazine, and Delicious Living. A professionally-trained chef, Molly holds an M.S. in Agriculture, Food, and Environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in International Studies from Colby College.

Patricia Plude, Director, Teacher Training Institute, is honored to have been a member of The Walden School community for 30 years. Serving in roles that have ranged from “junior faculty” to Executive Director, Pat is honored to direct The Walden School Teacher Training Institute, through which the school’s innovative and proven methods are being made available to a broader community of music educators.

Pat holds advanced degrees in piano performance from The Peabody Institute and the San Francisco Conservatory and has dedicated her career to promoting and performing new music, as well as teaching musicianship and improvisation. In addition to having performed with a number of San Francisco Bay Area new music ensembles, Pat is a former member of the dynamic performing group, Wing It!, an ensemble dedicated to mounting fully improvised performances combining dance, storytelling, and music. She is also certified to teach InterPlay®, a philosophy and practice of interdisciplinary improvisation based in creativity, community, and change. Pat is a lecturer at Santa Clara University, in Santa Clara, California, where she has designed and implemented an innovative aural skills curriculum for the music department. Pat also serves as the Minister of Worship Arts for First Mennonite Church of San Francisco.

Pamela Quist, Assistant Director, Teacher Training Institute, is a composer and has taught composition, piano and music theory for 35 years. A founder and former Director of The Walden School, Pamela was also on its Board of Directors and is a contributing author to The Walden School Musicianship Course: A Manual for Teachers. Pamela Quist joined the music faculty at Santa Clara University in 2001 where she teaches music composition and the upper division theory courses such as counterpoint, form and analysis, and orchestration. In addition, she teaches Performance and Culture, the history of Western civilization from the viewpoint of the performing arts-- theatre, dance and music. Pamela is a graduate of The Peabody Institute with a degree in piano performance and a doctorate in music composition. Her dissertation is entitled Indeterminate Form in the Work of Earle Brown. During the period from 1976 to 2000, Pamela was a faculty member at various institutions including SUNY Geneseo, Peabody Conservatory, Essex Community College, and the Johns Hopkins University Continuing Studies program.

As a composer, Pamela has written for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal combinations including chamber ensembles, orchestra, solo instrumental, solo piano, vocal and choral music. Her most recent work, Requiem for the People, for mixed choir and orchestra, received its American premiere in June 2007 and was performed by the Santa Clara Chorale and University Choirs in Prague and Vienna to critical acclaim. Pamela Quist's current composing project is Passages, a piano concerto for pianist Teresa McCollough.

Leo Wanenchak, Academic Dean, Director of Choral Program, has a 30 year association with Walden School. Trained by David Hogan and Pamela Quist, he is a contributing author to The Walden School Musicianship Course: A Manual for Teachers. Leo is a Teacher Training Institute Faculty member and was recently elected to a second term as a member of the Walden School Board of Directors.

He has held numerous positions as church musician and directed The Children’s Chorus of Maryland. A Peabody graduate, his association with its Preparatory included piano & musicianship faculty, Elderhostel Lecturer, Piano Department Chair, and directed a collaborative program for musicians and dancers, Arts for Talented Youth, working with such artists as Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks and Bobby McFerrin. A National Foundation for Advancement of the Arts Outstanding Educator, his students have awards from NFAA, MTNA and ASCAP. As conductor, keyboard artist, vocalist and narrator, he has performed throughout the US, including Saint Thomas Church, Riverside Church and Carnegie Hall, as well as concerts in Europe.

Leo is Assistant Conductor of The Baltimore Choral Arts Society, and teaches “Sound & Time,” skill sharpening for singers. With BCAS he has worked with: Dave Brubeck, Peter Schickele, Kathy Mattea, The Paris Chamber Orchestra and The Baltimore Symphony. This summer Leo toured France with BCAS, performing in Paris, Orion and Montélimar. He is faculty of the Peabody Preparatory and Director of the Larks, a Junior League of Baltimore vocal ensemble. Leo’s music is published by Boosey and Hawkes.

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