Sarah Parkes Bowen

Sarah Parkes Bowen is a freelance flautist and flute teacher. She studied an Mperf at the Royal College of Music, studying flute with Gitte Marcusson, Simon Channing and Rachel Brown, as well as piccolo with Kathleen Stevenson. She was a Fishmongers’ Company Beckwith Scholar and a TalentAid Award holder (Masonic Charitable Foundation). Sarah enjoys a varied career, playing orchestrally, performing as a chamber musician in recitals, as well as an orchestral soloist; most recently performing Mozart’s G major Flute Concerto and Bach’s B Minor Suite with orchestra. Highlights of Sarah’s career thus far, have included performing at the Fishmongers' Company's Annual Livery Concert hosted by Princess Anne where she began the concert, solo and recording at Abbey Road Studios. Sarah has performed in venues including Southbank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, St John’s Smith Square, the V&A, the RA and at Meta, as well as across continental Europe including The Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. She has played under the batons of Rafael Payare and Andrew Gourlay, as well as in Sir Thomas Allen’s RCM production of ‘The Marriage of Figaro’. Sarah enjoys working with composers and trying new, experimental pieces for flute, as well as for piccolo, alto and bass flutes. Sarah is a passionate teacher and teaches flute at St Margaret's School, Bushey and at St Augustine's Priory, Ealing; she also teaches privately in the schools' surrounding areas. Furthermore, she teaches in-person flute and music theory privately in Banbury and its surrounding villages, as well as teaching online via Zoom. Outside of music, Sarah loves languages and travelling in Europe. She is fluent in Spanish; whilst studying at the University of Leeds (BMus, First Class Honours), she spent her third year abroad on an Erasmus exchange to the Conservatorio Superior de Castilla y León, Salamanca. In her free time, Sarah enjoys pottering in her garden in Oxfordshire; gardening has become a real passion.