“In everything he played, Bowes revealed an exacting and deeply felt musicianship.”
Los Angeles Times.

“The playing was superb: brilliant, authoritative, free, passionate, totally committed, and powerfully projected. Bowes' tone is intense, variable and pure; his identification with every style was complete,…” Strings Magazine USA

The product of many years of steady growth, the playing of Thomas Bowes is now fast gaining international recognition. Not a child prodigy, or an early developer, Bowes has spent many years developing an unusually deep and expressive musical personality. He seeks and is revealing a truly profound relationship with the repertoire he now plays.

In concerto repertoire Bowes has featured British composers. He will make his debut with The Hallé and Mark Elder with the Elgar concerto this summer (2007). He played the work on the composer’s birthday in 2006 with renowned Elgarian Vernon Handley and the English Symphony Orchestra in Malvern. Bowes also has a deep knowledge of that other glory of the English Violin Concerto, that by Walton. In 2004, he spent 3 weeks at the invitation of Lady Walton studying the work at the composer’s erstwhile home on Ischia. He performed it in Oxford in October 2005 with the Oxford Philomusica Orchestra, also in collaboration with Vernon Handley.

“ First up was Walton’s highly passionate Violin Concerto, handled with immense skill by Thomas Bowes…The result is an extraordinary fusion of the player and the music, in which Bowes seems to engage totally with the composer’s emotions and intentions…And all this was combined with Bowes’s own musicianship, technical mastery and tonal purity to produce a performance of rare quality.” Oxford Times.

With the Britten concerto he made a sensational German debut with the Bremer Philharmoniker stepping in at less than 24 hours notice for performances with Sian Edwards in January 2003. He returned to Bremen in 2005 for the Elgar with the Finnish conductor Ari Rasilainen. Most recently (October 2006) he played the Britten with the Britten-Pears Orchestra at the Snape Maltings with Paul Daniel.
Bowes has excelled with the sensual and still little played Szymanowski concertos, making a specially recorded broadcast of No.2 for the 1998 BBC Proms season with the Ulster Orchestra and Takou Yuasa. Future plans include the concertos of Bartók and Schoenberg.
Bowes made his debut with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the world premiere of John Metcalf’s concerto “Paradise Haunts…”. He has recorded the work for the Signum Classics label with the BBC NOW and Grant Llewellyn; it is scheduled for release this Autumn. In 2001 he premiered the concerto of Eleanor Alberga with the SCO and Joseph Swensen to a flourish of rave reviews. The work was an SCO commission.

Born in Hertfordshire in 1960 and graduating from the masterclass of Bela Katona at Trinity College of Music in 1982, Bowes joined the London Philharmonic in 1985 and a year later the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. In 1987 he gave his London recital debut and between 1988 and 1992 was the founding leader of the Maggini String Quartet. In 1989 he was invited to become the leader of the London Mozart Players, London’s oldest established chamber orchestra, making his BBC Proms debut with them and Jane Glover in 1991.
Still in great demand as a guest leader, Bowes has lead many of the UK’s finest orchestras – LSO, Philharmonia, RPO, London Sinfonietta, SCO, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and in France, L’Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse.

But it is as a solo artist, both as recitalist and concerto player, that he has made the greatest impression since 1993. Forming, in 1995, the duo “Double Exposure” with his wife, the composer and pianist Eleanor Alberga, the Duo toured regularly and extensively in the USA until 2000. They made a ground breaking trip to five Chinese cities in 1997 as well as broadcasting and concertising in the UK. The repertoire was adventurous and featured commissions and first performances from Alberga herself as well as a host of US and UK composers. A New York recital at Carnegie in 2000 was extensively and tellingly reviewed by the distinguished writer Paul Griffiths in the New York Times. In 2003 Bowes became the Artistic Director of the annual “Langvad Chamber Music Jamboree” chamber music festival in northern Denmark.

He plays a 1659 Nicolo Amati.

31/1/07

Tom welcomes questions or comments on his career to date.
You can contact him at: Tom@ThomasBowes.com

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