Luke Nowak

Luke Nowak is excited to return to the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra for his second season. This fall, he will attend Saint Louis Priory School as a sophomore. He started playing drums when he was age six when his dad brought home a drum set from a neighbor’s garage sale. Since then, he started lessons with his grandfather, and then moved to Karen Nichols, a private instructor who taught him for about five years. Finally, he moved to Alan Stewart, the Associate Principal Percussionist for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, who is still his private instructor today.

As Luke’s school unfortunately does not have a band program, he looks for every opportunity he can to help out musically. Besides his past year in the Youth Orchestra, he has been in the pit orchestra for a Take 3 production of Narnia, and this past year, he helped out in the pit orchestra for Saint Louis Priory’s production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He assists in the musical Liturgy at Mass every Sunday playing percussion and piano as well. Among his favorite bands to listen and play along to are Boston, Steely Dan, Journey, Queen, Hall and Oates, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, AC/DC, the Beatles, and Rush.

In his free time he loves hanging out with friends, and also playing other instruments. Luke has been playing piano and taking lessons for about eight years and has started taking up guitar this past year. In the summer he works as a camp counselor. He is also a member of Priory’s junior varsity soccer team and their varsity Ultimate Frisbee team. Luke is so excited to return to the SLSYO and would like to thank his parents, his grandfather, and all the private instructors who have taught him.