Calvin Bowman
Calvin Bowman is acknowledged as one of Australia’s finest musicians: an outstanding organist, accompanist and chamber player who strives for nothing less than perfection.
Calvin Bowman was born in 1972. A graduate of the University of Melbourne, he was the first Australian to take a Doctor of Musical Arts from Yale University, assisted by a Fulbright scholarship. He is a former Senior Lecturer in Composition and University Organist at The Australian National University.
Dr Bowman is much in demand as a soloist, accompanist and chamber musician. A special love of J.S. Bach led him to perform the complete Bach organ works twice in public: once in 1995, and again in 2009 for the Melbourne International Festival, in a single seventeen-hour sitting. For that feat he was nominated for a Helpmann Award. In 2001 he re-opened the Melbourne Town Hall organ after its multi-million-dollar restoration, giving the world première of Philip Glass’s Voices in the composer’s presence.
As a keyboardist he has also premièred works by Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards, Richard Mills, Graeme Koehne, Andrew Schultz and others, and appeared as soloist with many of the major Australian orchestras, including regular Melbourne Symphony Orchestra appearances on the Melbourne Town Hall organ. He is a prolific composer who specialises in art song, with nearly a hundred songs to date. He is a laureate of the Ned Rorem Award for Song Composition, the Diana Barnhart American Song Competition, and the English Poetry and Song Society Artsong Award. His song Now Touch the Air Softly, recorded by Emma Matthews with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra for Deutsche Grammophon/ABC Classics, has become one of the most popular Australian art songs; the poet William Jay Smith called the setting “magnificent and flawless”.
His interest in vocal music led to two operas: Lost to the Music, to a libretto by John Marsden for the National Boys’ Choir, and The Magic Pudding – The Opera, commissioned and premièred by Victorian Opera in 2013 and revived in 2018. Major awards include an Australia Council Fellowship. He has been commissioned by Ars Musica Australis, Symphony Australia, and many individuals and ensembles; commissions for 2017–18 included works for the Flinders Quartet, Tinalley String Quartet, Greta Bradman, Steve Davislim, Stefanie Farrands, and a major song cycle for the 2017 Adelaide Festival. His songs have been heard at the Musikverein and the Elbphilharmonie.
He is an exclusive Decca/UMA artist; his début art-song discs Real and Right and True were released in 2018.
Calvin Bowman is featured on the following titles
Orgelbüchlein
Calvin Bowman gives an expert reading of J.S. Bach's Little Organ Book – a microcosm of the composer's inventive and improvisational genius – on the Ahrend organ at Robert Blackwood Hall.
Compositions by Calvin Bowman also appear on
Carols Psalms and Anthems
Under the direction of Professor Emeritus Peter Godfrey, CBE, the Trinity College Chapel Choir offers a striking programme of rarely heard carols, psalms and anthems spanning several centuries of sacred choral writing.
Composer
Calvin Bowman also appears on
Victoria Brass Live
A top-class Australian brass band under Matthew van Emmerik in a full, varied programme of innovative repertoire: two world premieres, three Australasian premieres, and some well-loved classics.
Calvin Bowman is a member of
Elysium Ensemble
The Elysium Ensemble has been acclaimed by critics for its exciting performances, fine musicianship and authoritative interpretations of Baroque and Classical repertoire on period instruments.