Stanley Walden


Stanley Walden is an American composer, musical performer, and professor of musical theater. He has written music for the theater in America and Europe, as well as for the concert stage. He has also been a clarinetist, actor and director. He is perhaps best known for writing music and lyrics of the revue Oh! Calcutta! He has also written a number of song cycles.

Clarinetist

Walden attended James Madison High School and studied modern dance with Merce Cunningham. He then attended New York University and Queens College, studying clarinet with David Weber and composition with Ben Weber. From 1953 to 1955 – and after serving in the U.S. Army as principal clarinetist of the 7th Army Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart – he worked as musical assistant to choreographers such as Martha Graham, José Limón, Jerome Robbins and Daniel Nagrin until 1960.
From 1957 to 1970, Walden lived in New York, performing as a clarinetist. He has played with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and as bass clarinetist with the New York Woodwind Quintet, among others, and was a founding member of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, the Gramercy Chamber Ensemble, the Penn Contemporary Players and performed with the Group for Contemporary Music.

Composer and educator

In 1967, he founded, along with Peter Schickele and Robert Dennis, the composition and performing trio The Open Window. In 1969, they composed the music and lyrics to the revue Oh! Calcutta!, which went on to become the longest running revue in Broadway history. The Open Window received a Grammy Award nomination for best score from an original cast album.
In 1970, Walden joined The Open Theater and composed the music for The Serpent and The Mutation Show. He then went on to join The Winter Project with Joseph Chaikin.
In 1970, he met the Hungarian writer and theater director George Tabori. They collaborated on more than 50 theater productions, including Pinkville, Sigmunds Freude, The Sinking of the Titanic, ''My Mother's Courage, Improvisations on Shylock, Jubiläum and Peepshow.
Walden then went to the Vienna Burgtheater with Tabori and Claus Peymann, where Mein Kampf, Ballade der Wienerschnitzel, Requiem for a Spy, and The Goldberg Variations were produced. In Tabori's own theater, Der Kreis, they collaborated on Masada, Lear's Shadow and For the Second Time, in which Walden starred with Hanna Schygulla. At the Berliner Ensemble, they produced The Brecht Files and The Earthquake Concerto.
In addition, Walden has also composed his own stage works, such as a jazz opera of Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, the opera Liebster Vater and Bach's Letzte Oper, a work commissioned by Der Danske Oper, with libretto by Jess Ornsbro.
He has composed numerous chamber works, both instrumental and vocal, and the orchestral works Circus for the Louisville Orchestra under Jorge Mester, later performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra ; Invisible Cities, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf ; and Weewis, Margo Sappington’s ballet commission by the Joffrey Ballet and later performed by companies in Europe and Mexico.
Walden also composed the chamber symphony, After Auschwitz, which was performed at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. It was also performed by the Budapest Strings Chamber Orchestra in Cividale del Friuli, Italy and by the Brandenburg Philharmonic in Potsdam, Germany.
His musicals include The Kid, Back Country, Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Bahn Frei!, Miami Lights, Café Mitte, Claire, Die Bettler Oper, The Goldberg Variations Musical and Butterfly Madam
Walden's film scores include David Newman's La fille d’Amérique, Vadim Glowna's Desperado City, which won the Caméra d’Or in Cannes and in which Walden also acted, and George Tabori’s Frohes Fest for German public service television broadcaster ZDF.
During his extensive career, he has received acclaim as a conductor, author, actor, director and educator. In 1991, he and his wife, Barbara Walden, founded the Musical/Show Department at the Berlin Universität der Künste. In 1998, collaborating with Barbara Walden, he published the book Life Upon The Wicked Stage'', which has become a standard work for training musical actors. In 2000, after resigning from his professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts, he continued to give workshops there in 2001. The Waldens also taught workshops at the Folkwang Schule in Essen, at the Theater Institute in Munich, in Moscow, at Sarah Lawrence College and at the California Institute of the Arts.
He served on the faculty of The Juilliard School at Lincoln Center from 1960 to 1964 and the Lincoln Center Institute. He was a guest teacher at Yale University and the Eastman School of Music.

Personal life

The parents of two sons, Matthew and Joshua, the Waldens lived in New York and Berlin before moving to Palm Springs, California, in 2007. Barbara Walden died in 2012. Joshua died in 2016.
In 2014, Walden made the autobiographical film CHUTZPAH! with Tom Gass.
In 2018, he published an autobiography: Telling Time: Reflections on a Life in Music. The book is dedicated to his partner, Rhonda Rockwell, whom he met in 2014. They reside in Palm Springs.

Stanley Walden at 90: a celebration

In 2022, Walden's career was celebrated across two continents in honor of his 90th birthday. Tributes took place in the United States and Germany: Barge Music in New York City, Baltimore Lieder Weekend and Leipzig.

Recordings

Clarinetist:
  • MOZART SERENADES
  • EDGAR VARÈSE
  • KURT WEILL, DARIUS MILHAUD
Composer/performer:
  • THREE VIEWS FROM THE OPEN WINDOW
  • THE OPEN WINDOW
  • OH! CALCUTTA!
Composer:
  • STANLEY WALDEN Naxos
  • JAN DeGAETANI/GILBERT KALISH
  • EASTMAN AMERICAN MUSIC SERIES, VOL 5
  • CAFÉ MITTE
  • GRIPS THEATER
  • DIE BETTLEROPER