Meet our Directors

Lindsey Strand Polyak,

Artistic & Executive Director

A Pacific Northwest native, Lindsey Strand-Polyak lives a hyphenated life to go along with her hyphenated name: divided between viola and violin; living in Whidbey Island, WA and Santa Monica, CA. She held the position Principal Violist with Seattle Baroque Orchestra, tours regionally with the Salish Sea Early Music Festiva and performed across the West in concert and festival appearances, including Musica Angelica, Baroque Music Montana, Bach Collegium San Diego, American Bach Soloists, Pacific MusicWorks, Baroque Festival Corona del Mar, Oregon Bach Festival, Portland Baroque Orchestra, and fringe concerts of Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals. She holds a PhD/MM in Musicology and Violin performance from UCLA.


Dr. Strand-Polyak is a passionate educator and arts advocate. In 2016, she co-founded the community baroque orchestra Los Angeles Baroque (LAB), and has grown the organization to include the flagship “Big Band” Baroque Orchestra, a chamber music outreach program, two Consort Clubs serving viol players, and two profiles in Early Music America. She is the Director of the San Francisco Early Music Society’s Baroque Workshop, and was just named Education Program Director for the Baroque Music Festival-Corona Del Mar. This season she will lead workshops for Early Music Seattle, Bitterroot Baroque, and Baroque Music Montana. Previously, she restarted the UCLA Early Music Ensemble with Elisabeth LeGuin in 2010, and then served as its Associate Director. Guest talks and residencies have included Michigan State University, University of Southern California, University of Oregon, Northwestern State University of Louisiana, University of Richmond, Sacramento State University, Montana State University, University of the Pacific, and California State University-San Bernardino.



When she’s not out on concert tours, you can find Lindsey practicing at the potter’s wheel and her work on the gallery shelves at the Whidbey Clay Center and Wildly Beloved Foods. You can find her work at baroquenpottery.com and on instagram @baroquenpottery. 

George Bozarth
Founding  Artistic Director

George Bozarth divides his year between Seattle and Bath, Maine.  A Professor Emeritus of the music history faculty at the University of Washington, he was an Artistic Director of the early music series Gallery Concerts for twenty-seven seasons. Internationally known as a Brahms scholar, he also specializes in the performance of Classical and Romantic music on period pianos.  George’s encyclopedia article on Johannes Brahms, co-authored with Walter Frisch, appears in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2000) and Grove Online.  He has published articles on the types of pianos Brahms liked to play and performance issues in his music, and, with Tamara Friedman, produced a two-CD set of performances of Brahms’s piano music (1905–25) preserved on Welte-Mignon piano rolls. 

George's article “Piano Wars: The Legal Machinations of London Pianoforte Makers, 1795–1806,” co-authored with Margaret Debenham and published in the Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, won the 2011 Frances Densmore Prize, awarded by the American Musical Instrument Society.  In 2018 his critical edition of Brahms's complete organ works was released by G. Henle (Munich). He is currently completing a book on Ferdinand Weber, Saxon organ, harpsichord, and pianoforte maker in Dublin, working on a book exploring the role of art music in in society in mid- to late 19th-century Boston, and preparing an annotated edition of unpublished letters by the avant-garde, Armenian-American soprano Cathy Berberian. 

Tamara Friedman
Founding Artistic Director


"...it was in Mozart's Sonata in D major, K. 311, that [Tamara Friedman] engaged me the most, and the slow movement   in particular.  She realized the drama inherent in the work while being sensitive and even romantic where the music suggested passion.  The perfect partner for her pianists' touch was the fortepiano."  
                                                                            (Morton Gold, Journal Tribune, Portland, ME)
Pianist Tamara Friedman has been praised for the depth, wit, and humor of her lively performances (Seattle Times) and appreciated as "the magnificent pianist" whose "way with Mozart reached my heart as well as my intellect" (Journal Tribune, Portland, Maine). Tamara attended the Oberlin Conservatory and received her master’s degree from the Mannes College of Music (NYC). She has collaborated with such international artists as Stanley Ritchie, Jaap Schröder, and Vicki Boeckman, and appears with violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock as Duo Amadeus.  In the Pacific Northwest she has performed on the Seattle Camerata, Allegro Baroque and Beyond, Belle Arte, Early Music Guild, Gallery Concerts, and Mostly Nordic series and for the Governor’s Chamber Music Festival. She has also performed for several summers on the Kennebec Early Music Festival in Bath, Maine.

Tamara has been a featured performer in early piano workshops for Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA), Seattle, Edmonds, and Washington State Music Teachers Associations, and the Western Early Keyboard Association. She maintains a private studio in La Conner, WA, where she teaches modern piano and fortepiano on her collection of 18th and 19th century keyboard instruments, which is on display at SEKM!—the Skagit Early Keyboard Museum.  


 
All "Queen Anne Concerts" performed in the intimate Queen Anne Christian Church, 1316  3rd Ave W, atop Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill.