Daniel Walden has won a Leonore Annenberg Fellowship for the Performing and Visual Arts.
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has been awarded a US$50,000 Leonore Annenberg Fellowship for the Performing and Visual Arts.
Daniel Walden [2012] was among nine artists awarded the 2016 Fellowship which aims to help them become successful "so they may someday serve as leaders in their field and help others in the future".
Daniel is both a musician – a keyboardist – who expects to use his Fellowship for recording projects and performances, and a musicologist who does research on contemporary and historical repertoire.
During his Fellowship term, he intends to work on a recording project that couples historical keyboard repertoire with commissions by both established and emerging composers; to participate in competitions for historical and contemporary performance at the International Competition Musica Antiqua in Bruges and the Prix Annelie de Man in Amsterdam; and collaborate with a harpsichord builder on the reconstruction of one of the 16th-century microtonal harpsichords that inspired the Renaissance avant-garde. Daniel proposes to use the enharmonic harpsichord in the CD recording project to “demonstrate the continuing relevance of early music to today’s practice while uncovering the deep historical legacy of microtonal experimentation”.
Daniel won the Gates Cambridge Scholarship to do an MPhil in Music Studies where he studied the dynamic intersections between music, Classical philosophy and the visual arts. He investigated how 16th-century Italian composers and philosophers turned to Classical antiquity to develop a unique culture of scientific, musical and magical experimentation that he says had an enduring influence on music theory and architectural practice. He is currently a third-year PhD candidate and Presidential Scholar in Music Theory at Harvard University.
The Leonore Annenberg Fellowship fund is administered by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Established artists and American arts institutions identify and recommend candidates to a Selection Council, which makes the final decisions. A distinguished mentor provides guidance and support to each Fellow for the duration of the one- or two-year grant.
