New England Conservatory at Walnut Hill
Walnut Hill's affiliation with the New England Conservatory (NEC) is an internationally acclaimed program that draws students from around the world. It is the only program in the United States that links a major conservatory and an independent school. The program brings students directly into the life of Boston's professional music community, allowing them to study in a conservatory environment, and to receive a standard of artistic and academic training unique at the secondary school level. Students regularly attend concerts and masterclasses and enjoy the musical offerings of a major metropolitan city.
Program Highlights
Weekly Masterclass with Benjamin Zander, Artistic Director
The premise of the masterclass is that who we are as people is inextricably linked to who we are as musicians. What we block in our minds and bodies is likely to be blocked in our music making too. The weekly masterclass offers an opportunity for the whole community of musicians at Walnut Hill, singers, instrumentalists, and composers to share this exploration and thereby to deepen their understanding of their art. The course is a forum for peer performance and evaluation. Students play for each other and explore different aspects of musical interpretation, as well as larger issues of life, thereby learning to become more expressive and articulate performers.
Superb Faculty and Private Lessons
Walnut Hill students have the advantage of studying music in one of the world’s greatest communities of musicians. The NEC at Walnut Hill seeks to match each student with an ideal teacher to encourage growth. Our faculty are drawn primarily from the New England Conservatory, many of whom are members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Private instruction is the core of the music curriculum and each student instrumental, voice and composition student receives a weekly one-hour lesson with his or her teacher. Individual lessons are highly specialized, and content and form are based on the needs of the student. A complete list of teachers who are or have recently taught Walnut Hill students is available on the last page of this brochure.
The Youth Philharmonic Orchestra
The joint program offered with New England Conservatory allows students to participate in one of the top youth orchestras in the United States. The majority of instrumental students are enrolled in the New England Youth Philharmonic Orchestra (YPO) under the baton of Maestro Benjamin Zander. The repertoire chosen allows students to work on challenging literature which are stables of the orchestra genre. Concerts in the past two years have included Stravinsky’s “Sacred u Printemps, “ Hidemith’s “Symphonic Methamorphoses,“ Strauss’s “Don Quixote,” and Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 3 and 5. YPO performs at the renowned Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory and tours regularly. Some Walnut Hill students are also members of other large ensembles such as the NEC Youth Symphonic Orchestra, the NEC Youth Choral, and the Massachusetts Youth Wind Ensemble.
Chamber Music
Chamber music is a central component of the New England Conservatory at Walnut Hill curriculum. Each semester students are assigned new work from the standard and contemporary chamber repertoire. In addition to chamber music study at Walnut Hill, students may also join an additional group at New England Conservatory. Each semester concludes with multiple chamber music programs allowing students to perform the repertoire they have studied.
Voice Master Class and Opera Workshop
Voice Master Class meets twice weekly to provide an opportunity for voice students to sing for one another, to study elements of vocal technique and performance, including diction and preparation of text, and to develop focus and expressive capabilities in audition and performance. Students also hear and compare professional singers in recordings and in live performances, and study a range of vocal repertoire. Opera Workshop develops singer/actor techniques using exercises and excerpts from opera and operettas. Singers study and perform opera scenes appropriate to their vocal level in order to learn about creating and projecting a character. Learning about the opera, the composer, and the librettist and discussing the historical and social context of the opera are part of the preparation for the yearly Walnut Hill opera scenes performance.
Composition Seminar
This course meets weekly for one period. In the first trimester, students are exposed to some of the major influences in twentieth-century music, through listening and through looking at scores within a historical context. The second trimester is based around class exercises designed to sharpen compositional appetite and skills, along with master classes geared toward performance of the students' works. In the third trimester, visiting professional composers speak to the class about their own music and compositional techniques.
