Walls (b. 1963) speaks a musical language that reflects his broad exposure to classical, jazz and popular idioms.  He received his earliest training in piano and voice in his native city, Columbus, Ohio, and completed studies in vocal/choral music education at Harding University in Arkansas.  He went on to receive a Master of Music degree in composition in 1995 from The University of North Texas, where he is currently completing a doctorate.  Walls has studied composition with Joseph Klein, Martin Mailman, Andrew May, and Cindy McTee.  His teachers in electro-acoustic music have included Larry Austin, John Mallia, and Phillip Winsor.

A few highlights of Walls’ accomplishments at North Texas include Psalm 46, a work for mixed chorus featured on a master class with Jaakko Mäntyjärvi in 2004.  Intimate Strangers, a soundscape for dancers and fixed media was presented at the 8th Annual Creative Arts Research Symposium at Texas Woman’s University in 2005, and was performed by six dancers on the university’s spring recital, DanceMakers, Too.  Walls drew from his in-depth knowledge of Italian language and literature by writing Three Sonnets by Dante Alighieri for tenor and piano.  The set was premiered by the internationally acclaimed tenor, Stephen Mark Brown, at Horchow Auditorium of the Dallas Museum of Art in 2007.  Walls is currently composing L’Occhiale di Galileo, a work for full orchestra celebrating Galileo’s discoveries of the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn in 1609 and 1610.

Walls’ chamber works include Rosa: Tango, selected for performance by the Southern Methodist University String Quartet and presented on a master class with the New York-based string quartet ETHEL.  Fugal Waltz on a Row by Slonimsky (2005) for saxophone quartet has been performed three times on recitals at North Texas.  An earlier work for trumpet, horn, and trombone, Three Rags, was presented in 1992 and 1993.  Autographs 1928: Four Songs for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble (1994), a work for ten performers, draws its texts from remembrances, wishes, and rhymes found in Walls’ maternal grandmother’s autograph book.

Walls' interests and experience has spanned several areas of the humanities.  He has taught courses in music and Italian language in Searcy, Arkansas,  in Florence, Italy, and in Houston, Dallas, and Denton, Texas.  He served as Project Executive for Yu Paideia, a Singaporean educational consulting and research firm, for the seminar Ecology of Creativity in Rome and Florence in 2004.  As a student he even tried his hand at drama and won awards for his roles in musicals.

Walls served as a vice president of Composers Forum at North Texas, and his awards in composition include the Outstanding Music Composition Studies Graduate Student Award, the Dean’s Camerata Scholarship, the Richard and Candace Faulk Scholarship, and the David M. Schimmel Memorial Scholarship.  He is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda music honors society, American Composers Forum, National Association of Teachers of Singing, College Music Society, BMI, and Alpha Chi.  He served as a judge of new compositions for the Texas Music Teachers Association in 2005, and for the Music Teachers National Association, South Central Division, in 2006.  Beyond his professional pursuits, Walls enjoys cooking Italian food and spending time with his wife, two children, family and friends, and his church.