The Team
Aaron Walz
Sound Designer & Music Composer, Audio Lead, Vocalist, Pianist
Aaron Walz is a composer, sound designer and audio lead primarily for mobile, social, VR, AAA & casual games. He earned his BA in music from Sonoma State University. He scored the top-ranking Facebook adventure, Ravenwood Fair, which enjoyed 25 million plays per month. He has received several awards for his audio work including “Best Game” at GDC’s Independent Game Festival and Game Tunnel’s “Best Sound.” Aaron sings and records with several projects. He has trained with Grammy award winner, Joseph Jennings, Chris Fritzsche of Chanticleer and Clerestory, Magen Solomon of SFCA, Will Johnson and Robert Worth, among others. Aaron strives to create music for media that stands alone as a worthy contribution to art. Aaron was a co-founder and partner of the Game Audio Alliance, LLC.
Aaron drives Walz Music & Sound and has been in-house at Riot Games, Telltale Games, Cryptic Studios and Kabam. He wrote the theme song for Ravenwood Fair (John Romero project), and is the composer of the RPG series Aveyond. In addition to audio creation, Aaron is also skilled with implementation and audio middleware (WWISE, FMOD) within Unreal, Unity and other engines.
Aaron has received several awards for his work including “Best Game” at Microsoft’s Independent Games Festival and Game Tunnel’s “Best Sound”. Ravenwood Fair was also nominated for Best Audio at the GDC Online Awards.
Additionally, Aaron does public speaking and lectures, private lessons, podcast audio and sound, has worked on films, television commercials and sings and records with several projects. His biggest influences are the great Japanese game composers, as well as Italian and French classical composers. He also enjoys tennis and triathlon.
Listen on iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp & Soundcloud!
Dina Rao
Recording Artist
Dina weilds bluesy vocals and is inspired by her upbringing enjoying rock, singer/songwriters and jazz standards. Her influences include Dinah Washington, Etta James, Ann Wilson from Heart and Pat Benatar. Her vocals have taken her throughout the Mediterranean and Caribbean, as well as performances at the Fillmore Jazz Festival, Top of the Mark, Slim’s, Red Devil Lounge, Rassela’s, Pier 23 and Martuni’s, all in San Francisco. Dina is also a professional voice-over artist for games and has released several singles, available in physical CD form and digital download via iTunes and other partners.
Find Dina’s single “Every Little Piece of Me” on iTunes.
Dina’s iTunes Artist Page & Spotify Page.
Rosy Maguina
Recording Artist
Rosy Maguina was born in Chimbote, Peru. She came to the USA with her family in 1989. When she was 7-years-old, her mother gave her a guitar and she taught herself how to play. Soon, she was writing songs. From then on, music became an important part of her life. She grew up listening to songs that told a story in a very simple way. Songs with a meaning and a message. Rosy’s songs are honest and passionate. Every word… every melody comes from her heart.
Find her single “Only When I’m With You” on iTunes and Amazon.
Find her single “Life Goes On” on iTunes and Amazon.
Eva Maass
Classical, Jazz & Pop Vocalist, Flutist & Bassist
Eva has studied music since the age of nine. Her first instrument is flute and then she began her study of voice. Her musical training began at the Santa Rosa Junior College and continued at Sonoma State University. She added the electric bass in order to be able to cross into popular and jazz styles. Eva has sung with a wide variety of vocal ensembles, including the Sonoma County Bach Choir and Chamber Singers, with whom she toured Italy twice. She has performed as a chorister with the Santa Rosa Symphony, and was a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and Chamber Singers. Eva’s flute, bass and vocal work can be heard in many Walz Music tracks.
Find Eva’s album “Soprano Solstice” on iTunes and Bandcamp.
Eva on Spotify.
Teresa Conway
Voiceover Artist & Vocalist
Teresa performs with Cabaret Bohème in Tucson, Arizona, as a leading vocalist. They perform at Club Congress frequently and should not be missed!
Teresa is blessed with a chart full of fire signs. You will sense her warmth the moment you see her flaming red hair and hear her sweet, passionate voice.
Teresa made her Walz Music debut with nR Element’s album “Miscommunication” on the track “The Promised Land,” which is a cover version from the Final Fantasy video game.
Teresa is warm & healing and is an important part of the Walz Music team of artists.
Find Teresa’s singles “Candle on the Water” and “Never Ending Story” on iTunes.
Teresa’s Spotify Page
Lamont Ridgell
Voiceover Artist
Originally from Michigan, Lamont sings, dances, acts, and yes… voice-overs. He is a classically trained Lyric Baritone from Western Michigan University (WMU) and grad school product of Syracuse University.
While attending both universities, he also sang in their choruses as well as highly acclaimed vocal jazz ensembles. While attending WMU however, he was also a radio announcer at NPR affiliate, WMUK (102.1 FM). Since then, he’s done projects including being the announcer for the Syracuse University Pride of the Orange, Books for the Blind, voice-overs for Fisher Price PowerTouch electronic books, and with Walz Music and Sound. Whether it’s a romantic leading man or frightened turtle, there’s a voice inside his head that’s bound to be the right fit… somewhere.
Laura Domingo
Voiceover Artist
Laura is a theatre & film actress, singer, dancer and voice actor, who recently took home the 2012 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle award for Best Featured Actress in a Straight Play.
She is what as known as a quadruple-threat: she sings, she dances, she makes you cry, and she can make you laugh with but a single word. Go ahead, ask her to say “buffalo” and try to keep a straight face.
With this dynamite voice of hers, she has covered a wide range of characters: from a bingo-calling witch to a gruff card dealer, fiery Italian wife to washed-up Southern songstress — and one has to assume that there’s an anthropomorphic unicorn somewhere in the future.
Krisha Montmorency
Classical Violinist
Krisha has played the violin since age ten. She holds a BA in Music at Sonoma State University and studied abroad twice in Music History and Performance at the Royal Holloway College of the University of London. Although primarily a classical violinist, Krisha enjoys singing and exploring on the viola and electric violin as well. Krisha’s greatest passions in music are opera and orchestra music, and she is one of the founding members of the American Philharmonic-Sonoma County. She has participated with various domestic and foreign choral and orchestra groups in Mexico, Canada, Ireland, England, Italy, New York, Oregon, Hawaii, and California. She can be heard on many Walz Music tracks.
Hyd (N. Hemler)
Electronic Music Creator
N. Hemler aka Hyd is a musician, game designer and enthusiast, and techie who dreams of creating worlds full of wonder and intrigue. Hyd’s interest in music began when listening to video game soundtracks but didn’t blossom into a love for music production until picking up a demo copy of FLStudio 3 and playing with various samples and instruments to create remixes of various video game songs.
It was from there he started making bootleg eurobeat and dance remixes of pop music and the love only grew from there. To date he has collaborated with a number of wonderful designers, singers, and other musicians to lend his take on their songs through remixing and also in filling game worlds with music for people to enjoy while playing anything from rhythm games to RPGs..
Pete Ellison
DJ & Remixer
A steady and important contributor to Walz Music & Sound as a remixer for our side-projects and artist releases and assistance with electronic genres. He also created our website and our current logo revision.
Pete draws cute things, produces music and art, designs logos, creates t-shirts and merchandise, builds websites, and directs short films. Whatever the medium, his goal is always to create something iconic and memorable. He’s heavily influenced by Rave Culture, Anime, Video Games, J-pop, Crafting and Retro Style.
Pete Ellison (as deejay Kid Whatever) is a mainstay and innovator in the Portland rave scene. Gleefully mixing both the accessible and obscure, his sets work 90’s rave, speed garage, 4×4 Shibuya-kei club stompers, Korean crunk pop, Italo-disco, arms-in-the-air princess trance, and a bag full of custom re-edits and bootleg remixes into a dancefloor frenzy THAT DESTROYS ALL IN ITS PATH.
Kid Whatever is 1/2 of underground electro-pop duo Peroxide Mocha and runs the mostly-free record label Donut Nook. He has recently completed remixes for Microfilm, Foxdye, Graz, Little Nobody, Angel Theory, Th’ Mole, and Attery Squash.