Luke Fitzpatrick, artistic director
Luke Fitzpatrick is a violinist, composer and improvisor. He is a founding member and artistic director of Inverted Space, a Seattle-based new music collective. Recent performances include the complete Freeman Etudes by John Cage, Luigi Nono’s La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura with André Richard and Marcin Pączkowski and the World Premier Performance of The Complete Works for Adapted Viola and Intoning Voice by Harry Partch. He has worked personally with composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, Ben Johnston, Charles Corey and Qasim Naqvi. Additionally, he has performed with Deltron 3030, The Penderecki String Quartet, The Parnassus Project, the Seattle Modern Orchestra, The Moth, the California EAR Unit and is currently concertmaster of the Seattle Philharmonic String Orchestra. His world premiere recording of Vera Ivanova's Quiet Light for solo violin was released on Ablaze Records in 2011. In 2017 he was selected as an Artist-in-Residence by the Jack Straw Foundation to record The Complete Works for Adapted Viola and Intoning Voice by Harry Partch. Luke holds degrees from The University of Washington (DMA), California Institute of the Arts (MFA) and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (BM). His principal teachers include Benny Kim, Mark Menzies, Lorenz Gamma and Ron Patterson. He previously served as Artist-in-Residence at the University of Washington.
Marcin Pączkowski, co-director
Marcin Pączkowski is a composer, conductor, and digital artist, working with both traditional and electronic media. As a composer, he is focused on developing new ways of creating and performing computer music. His pieces involving realtime gesture control using accelerometers have been performed at the Music of Today concert series in Seattle, Washington, Northwest Percussion Festival in Ashland, Oregon, and at the Audio Art festival in Kraków, Poland. As a conductor he is involved in performing new music and premiering new works. He is the conductor and co-director of Inverted Space, a Seattle-based new music collective. He is also the music director of the Evergreen Community Orchestra in Everett, Washington and co-founder of the contemporary chamber vocal ensemble Pogratulujmy Mrówkom in Kraków, Poland. He received his PhD from the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. He also received Masters’ degrees from the Academy of Music in Kraków, Poland (composition and conducting), and from University of Washington in Seattle, Washington (composition). He was a grant recipient from Polish Institute of Music and Dance and from Lesser Poland Scholarship Foundation Sapere Auso.
Brooks Tran, co-director
A native of the Pacific Northwest, Brooks Tran began playing the piano at the age of seven. He continued his musical studies at the University of Washington where he worked with Patricia Michaelian and Craig Sheppard. Tran has performed throughout the United States as well as on the air, and has been a featured soloist with the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra, UW Symphony, UW Wind Ensemble, Seattle Youth Symphony, and Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra, among others. Always an adventurous collaborator, he performs regularly with chamber partners and has worked with internationally acclaimed groups, including the Emerson String Quartet, Claremont Trio, Cuarteto Casals, and members of the Seattle Chamber Music Society. He has also shared the stage with innovative dance groups from around the world, including Compagnie Marie Chouinard of Montreal, and the Ballet du Grand Théåtre de Genève. Tran is a strong proponent of contemporary music, giving Seattle premieres of Luigi Nono’s …sofferte onde serene… and George Crumb’s Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik, as well as works by local up-and-coming composers, and is a core member of Inverted Space. In addition to performing, Tran is the co-founder and artistic director of Parnassus Project, a chamber collective dedicated to performing in alternative venues and providing a fresh take on the classical music experience. He is currently pursuing his Doctoral of Musical Arts, studying with Craig Sheppard, and maintains a private teaching studio.
Jeff Bowen, co-director
Jeff Bowen is a composer and guitarist, and a co-director of Seattle’s Inverted Space Ensemble. His compositions have been performed by Pascal Gallois, Beta Collide, Ensemble DissonArt, and the Nebraska Chamber Players, among other ensembles in the USA and Europe. In 2013 his orchestral piece Stalasso was featured in the Seattle Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Works program, and he has recently presented work at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and the University of Nebraska New Music Festival.
Jeff is currently active in Seattle as a performer on classical and electric guitars, playing new works and 20th-century repertoire with the Inverted Space Ensemble, Seattle Modern Orchestra, Universal Language Project, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra, and most recently in collaboration with Marcin Pączkowski on live electronics for a performance of Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint.
After studying classical guitar with William Ash in St. Louis, he received a BA in Music from Stanford University, where he studied guitar performance with Charles Ferguson and composition with Jaroslaw Kapuscinski and Mark Applebaum. He recently completed a DMA in composition at the University of Washington under Joël-François Durand.
Nathan Harrenstein is a lower strings coach for SYSO in the Schools and an active freelance cellist in the Seattle area. In 2013, Nathan joined the Southbank Sinfonia in London for a one-year position. During that time, his performances include an internationally televised Verdi vs. Wagner debate with Stephen Fry, the UK premiere of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels, collaborations with Squarepusher, the Royal Opera House, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and the BBC Concert Orchestra, as well as concerts in Italy and France. He performed in many concert halls around the UK including the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room, the Australia House, the Royal Opera House, and the Barbican. He has performed under the direction of conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy, Ed Gardner, Charles Hazelwood, Rebecca Miller, Michael Berman, and Simon Over, among others. In addition to Southbank Sinfonia, Nathan was also part of an orchestra that toured around the United Kingdom with English pop singer-songwriter Tony Hadley. Nathan holds an MM and BM in Cello Performance from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Washington.
Nathan Harrenstein
Josh Archibald-Seiffer is a Seattle-based composer and pianist whose work explores the expressive potential of structures as both organizational and narrative forces. His music has been played in the U.S., Canada, and Germany by groups such as Dal Niente, the Seattle Symphony, Pascal Gallois, sfSound, and Inverted Space Ensemble. Archibald-Seiffer received an Honorable Mention for his work Music for Orchestra in the 2015 American Composers’ Forum National Composition Contest, and he was a 2010 recipient of the Robert M. Golden Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Creative Arts. He completed his BA in Music Composition at Stanford University in 2010 under the guidance of Brian Ferneyhough and Mark Applebaum, and he is currently pursuing his DMA (ABD status) with Joël-François Durand.
Archibald-Seiffer is a frequent performer with Seattle-based contemporary music group Inverted Space Ensemble. Recent credits include Featured Pianist at "Earle Brown: A Retrospective," a concert presented at the Good Shepherd Center in Seattle in January 2016 with support from the Earle Brown Foundation as well as Featured Guest Performer for the Seattle Polish Cultural Society's Lutoslawski Centenary Celebration. In addition, Archibald-Seiffer's performance in Seattle Maderna Fest 2015 at the Jack Straw Cultural Center was recorded and broadcast on Second Inversion Radio, an contemporary-music-focused affiliate of KING-FM 98.1. He has collaborated as a performer on projects with the Seattle Modern Orchestra, 5th Avenue Theater, the University of Washington Harry Partch Ensemble, Daria Binkowski, Stacey Mastrian, Luke Fitzpatrick, and Marcin Paczkowski.
Josh Archibald-Seiffer
Steven Damouni
Steven Damouni is an active performer of both contemporary and traditional repertoire. He holds a Bachelors of Music in Piano Performance and a Masters of Art in Music from Washington State University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. Steven has performed in masterclass for many prominent teachers including: Nelita True, Doug Humphreys, Robert McDonald, Stephen Drury, and Jonathan Feldman among others. In the summer of 2015, he participated in New England Conservatory’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice where he performed the Concord Sonata of Charles Ives in masterclasses and at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. He has won numerous regional and state competitions and is equally at ease as a chamber musician. Steven has won many prizes at regional and state competitions. He is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Washington where he is studying with Dr. Robin McCabe.
“…precise and energetic…” - New York Times
Saxophonist and composer Kevin Baldwin is an experimental artist creating a name for himself by tackling some of the most experimental and innovative music around the U.S. With numerous premieres by composers such as Francois Rose, Eneko Vadillo-Perez, and his own works; Kevin has sought to push the saxophone and music to new realms. Kevin has performed with numerous ensembles such as Iktus+, Ensemble Mise-en, Tactus, Qubit, and Inverted Space and at Symphony Space, Roulette, Issue Project Room, and Galapagos in New York City. As a composers, he has received commissions and several other premieres from ensembles such as an Play, Cellophone, and the Tempus Continuum Ensemble. Kevin is currently a DMA candidate in Music Composition at the University of Washington where he studies with Dr. Huck Hodge and Dr. Joel-Francois Durand. Kevin holds a B.M. in Music Education and Music Composition from University of the Pacific, and an M.M in Contemporary Performance from the Manhattan School of Music.
Kevin Baldwin
French-born musician Laure Struber is a dynamic performer, compelling teacher and a music-activist and interpreter in her community.
The daughter of a jazz musician and an artist-painter, she grew up in Strasbourg and Paris and started the piano at the age of 3 through the Suzuki method. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Strasbourg University, and a Diploma of Musical Studies at the Strasbourg Conservatory of Music, with a minor in early music studies. She came to the United States for the first time when she was 20, through an exchange program between Strasbourg University and Syracuse University and continued her studies as a Fulbright scholar at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, earning a Master in Piano Performance under the guidance of Professor Mack McCray.
She settled in Seattle in 2014, serving as the lead Teaching Assistant for the UW School of Music Secondary Piano program. During her studies with Dr. Robin McCabe, she won the University of Washington School of Music concerto competition performing the Chopin E minor concerto.
Most recently, Laure earned her Doctorate in Musical Arts in Piano Performance at the University of Washington in 2017, writing her dissertation on Marie Jaëll's work on hand’s physiology.
In the past decade, Laure has performed widely through Europe and in the US as a soloist, chamber musician, keyboardist for the Strasbourg Philharmonic, and has been the recipient of numerous awards including a France-Fulbright Alumni distinction, a Marina Grin award for “Fine pianism and selfless contribution to the musical world” and a Soroptimist prize. She played master classes for Ethery Jakeli, Awadagin Pratt, Pierre Goy, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Garrick Ohlsson, Boris Berman and performed in major venues, such as: the International Festival of Contemporary Music MUSICA, the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music Art of the Piano Summer Festival, the Zephyr International Chamber Music Festival in Italy or Meany Center for the Performing Arts. She collaborated with many chamber music colleagues, and played for established ensembles, including among others the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Conservatory Baroque Orchestra, the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, and Inverted Space, for which she premiered Enfance, Quatre Tableaux by Joël-François Durand.
Laure Struber
Natalie Ham
Natalie Ham is a flute student of Donna Shin in the Doctor of Musical Arts program at the University of Washington. She holds her Bachelor of Applied Music from the Eastman School of Music. Natalie has performed as principal flute in concert, opera, and ballet productions with the University of Washington Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Bellevue (WA), the Eastman Philharmonia and Chamber Orchestra, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the Bay View Opera Orchestra (MI), and the American Wind Symphony Orchestra (NY). In addition, she is an active performer in chamber ensembles, including The Evergreen Trio, the Inverted Space Ensemble, the University of Washington Modern Ensemble, the University of Washington Baroque Ensemble, the University of Washington Harry Partch Ensemble, the featured wind quintet of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra (NY), and the Bay View Wind Quintet (MI). She has participated as artist and teacher at the Snowater Flute Festival (WA) and was the featured soloist and flute teacher with the American Wind Symphony Orchestra. Most recently, she was the flute and piano teacher at the Belvoir Terrace Summer Camp (MA). In Seattle, Natalie serves in administration positions as the Membership Chair on the Seattle Flute Society Board of Directors and the Housing Chair for the 2022 American Guild of Organists National Convention. Natalie also assisted in organizing the University of Washington Max Reger Symposium (2016). She is currently a Predoctoral Teaching Associate at the University of Washington.
