Richard Gowers

Richard Gowers is the senior organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, where he is reading Music. He began learning the organ with Nigel Kerry while a chorister in the King’s College Choir, and won a music scholarship to Eton College, where he studied with David Goode. Shortly before his final year of school he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and was awarded the Limpus, Shinn and Durrant Prize. After winning the 2013 Northern Ireland International Organ Competition, he spent a year in Germany, studying at the Mendelssohn Conservatoire in Leipzig. Thanks to generous support from the Nicholas Danby Trust he studied with Prof. Stefan Engels and Daniel Beilschmidt and was given access to historic instruments familiar to Bach and Mendelssohn. He is currently taught by Gordon Stewart. At King’s Richard plays for daily services in term time, as well as recordings, concerts and tours. Recent concerts with the choir have included the Concertgebouw, the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the Aldeburgh Festival and the BBC Proms. Through the choir he has performed with orchestras such as the Britten Sinfonia, Philharmonia and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He also maintains an active concert schedule independent from the choir, and has traveled the world as a concert organist. In the past two years recitals have brought him Australia for a Bach series in Brisbane Town Hall at the inaugural Brisbane Baroque Festival, Ireland, Iceland and Germany. In September he made his third concert tour of the United States, playing recitals in Miami, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, Albuquerque and Phoenix, and he has previously given recitals at Washington National Cathedral, Princeton and Harvard Universities and Trinity Church, Boston. In the UK he has performed in St Albans Cathedral for the St Albans International Organ Festival, St Paul’s Cathedral, Norwich Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Reading and Leeds Town Halls. Richard is also a keen pianist, particularly for chamber music and Lieder accompaniment. Recent projects have included the piano trios of Ravel and Mendelssohn (Op. 49), Butterworth A Shropshire Lad and Schumann Dichterliebe. During the restoration of the King’s College Chapel organ he played daily services on the piano, using works by Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Mozart, Liszt, Stravinsky and Ravel as voluntaries. He performed Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G in 2013, and is preparing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A, K. 488 for the coming term. He has been taught by Christopher Hughes, Prof. Alexander Meinel and Prof. Charles Owen. As a harpsichordist, recent performances include the complete Brandenburg Concertos in King’s over the past year, Mozart Le Nozze di Figaro and solo recitals advocating contemporary works by Ligeti and Albright. He is currently junior president of King’s College Music Society, which has undergone an extensive image change in the past months. As a conductor he has directed performances of Ravel Daphnis et Chloé, Suite no. 2, Schubert Unfinished Symphony, Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem and Bach Christmas Oratorio with Cambridge University Collegium Musicum and Margaret Faultless.