Owen Rees

Born in 1964, organist and choral conductor Owen Rees studied and performed at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge, on a scholarship with Professors Peter le Huray and Iain Fenlon, until his doctorate in 1991. Concurrently lecturer at St. Peter's College and St. Edmund's Hall, Oxford, he took up the same post at the University of Surrey in 1996, then taught at Oxford University from 1997, where he was also organist and choirmaster at Queen's College and research fellow at Somerville College. In 1986, in the service of Renaissance music, he founded the Cambridge Taverner Choir with Gary Snapper, then extended his research to the Santa Cruz monastery in Coimbra, before becoming musical director of the A Capella Portuguesa choir in 1989, specializing in early works from Portugal and Spain. His recordings highlight scores by Manuel Cardoso, Pedro de Cristo, Duarte Lobo, Cristobal de Morales and Francisco Guerrero. With the choral ensemble Contrapunctus, which he founded in 2010 at Oxford University, Owen Rees explores a wide repertoire including works by Byrd, Tallis, Taverner, Sheppard, Fayrfax, Josquin Desprez, Robert Parsons, William Mundy and Robert White in the collections Libera Nos: The Cry of the Oppressed (2013), In the Midst of Life (2015), Virgin and Child (2017), Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas (2019) or Salve Salve Salve (2020), as well as Italian composers such as Monteverdi, Legrenzi, Lotti or Steffani in Harmonies of Devotion (2024). He also tackles the modern, even contemporary, repertoire of Vaughan Williams, Howells, Britten, Bednall and Nico Muhly in The House of the Mind (2018). In 2024, the album That Sweet City brings together tenor Nick Pritchard and soprano Alaw Grug Evans around Kenneth Leighton's Veris Gratia, as well as the participation of actor Rowan Atkinson, narrator in Vaughan Williams' An Oxford Elegy.

Please enable Javascript to view this page competely.