Talk:The Walden School

This article needs a lot of work. Let's get all the help we need from Walden alumni about this school.

Cleanup tagging
While this is a good start, this article appears more promotional then neutral. I've accordingly flagged it for ad cleanup, everyone is welcome to assist! Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 05:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I am trying to overhaul this very bad page
I am trying to overhaul what is considered by Walden staff and faculty to be a legendarily poor wikipedia page about the Walden School. It was basically written by an incredibly enthusiastic former student back in like 2005, with some scattershot revisions in subsequent years. Many of the facts on this page are out of date, but it also suffers greatly from purple prose, and the problem of having far too much information given - in my opinion, the purpose of this page does not need to be a compendium of every single 15-second blessing the Walden School has sung before meals, but instead to provide an easy to access summary of the general Walden experience that an outsider might care to know. There are many paragraphs here which could easily be condensed down to a single sentence without losing any value to the layman. The particular edit I wanted to make which triggered the editors was to delete the entire section labeled "Traditional practices," as well as the Methodology subheadings of "Choral Singing," "Composers Forums," "Ensembles-in-Residence," and "Composers-in-Residence." In their place, I was planning on inserting the following newly written sections in different locations:

Young Musicians Program On weekdays, members of the Young Musicians Program have a morning meeting where they sit silently listening to the environment for a few minutes. Then, students take three 45-minute classes. Every student takes classes in composition, musicianship, and some kind of specialty class. In recent years, Walden’s specialty classes have focused on topics as diverse as jazz improvisation, Beethoven’s string quartets, medieval church music, learning to write a musical, and electronic music. After classes end, the entire student body, along with the faculty, staff, and neighbors in the community, come together to sing in the chorus.

The Walden School is nonreligious in nature, but before each meal the camp sings blessings or listens to a reading. After lunch, students have assigned practice periods, as well as free time throughout the afternoon when the staff and faculty organize recreational activities like swim trips. Many nights there is “Evening Music,” where the entire camp comes together to learn songs that are often traditionally sung at Walden. There are also Open Mic nights, where students can put on skits and show off their talents. Every Friday, visiting professional musicians perform concerts for the camp, which are free and open to the public. On Saturdays, students hike nearby mountains, including Mt. Monadnock. When they reach the summit, the student body sings music that they have learned throughout the summer. After the hike, students go on a shopping trip, then later in the evening there is a dance. Students also have chances throughout the summer to attend workshops with visiting composers and performers, and visit other local arts venues such as the MacDowell colony. Every night, at the conclusion of activities, the students, faculty, and staff come together in a circle and sing a song entitled “Goodnight Music,” written by Sheri Fleming. This song is always accompanied by a performer who improvises an introduction before the song begins.

Festival Week The final week of Walden’s Young Musicians Program is referred to as “Festival Week.” In its current form, Festival Week opens on Sunday night, when a composer-in-residence presents their music in a lecture about the work they do. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the Festival Forums are held. In these forums, the Walden School Players and other members of the Walden community come together to perform world premieres of the new music that students have been composing during the summer. After each performance, the composer-in-residence moderates a discussion with the young composers and the audience. On Thursday of Festival Week, there is an open house during which the families of students are invited to watch classroom demonstrations, eat a barbecue dinner, and participate in Evening Music. On Friday night, the Walden School performs its annual choral concert.

The Walden School Players For many years, the Young Musicians Program was visited during Festival Week by professional ensembles such as the Prism Saxophone Quartet, the Peabody Trio, and Non Sequitur. In 2006, the Walden School formed a new ensemble-in-residence of professional instrumentalists named The Walden School Players, who spend two weeks on the campus, perform a concert with a program of their choosing, and then stay through Festival Week to perform the new compositions that students have written. This year’s Walden School Players features bassoonist Dana Jessen, pianist Eric Wubbels, clarinetist Katie Schoepflin, violinist Erica Dicker, flautist Laura Cocks, violist Tawnya Popoff, and cellist Chris Wild.

Composer’s Forums At least once a week, the Walden School hosts a Composers Forum, where students can have the music they are writing be performed. Then, the composers are invited up to the stage to participate in a discussion with the audience about their music, which moderated by faculty members. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DublinInTheSummer (talk • contribs) 04:51, 9 July 2017 (UTC)