Rowan Vince

Upcoming Gigs

CMS Recital - "Romantic Impressions" (aka "How to Score a Date with Venus") - A delicious mix of Romantic-era epics (Chopin G minor Ballade, Schumann Fantasie) followed by my two favourite French sea pieces, Ravel's "Ship on the Ocean", and Debussy's "Joyous Isle" about the home of Venus the love goddess. Nobody's sure whether the piece is about setting off to find the island, or about leaving it having presumably had an enjoyable stay, or something else entirely. Great music though.

Tuesday 2 March. 10.30am. Camberwell Uniting Church. 314 Camberwell Rd. Tix at the door $17/$15/$5(children). More info at http://home.vicnet.net.au/~music/html/morning_concerts_2010.html.

Rowan Vince is a Melbourne based pianist, keyboardist, composer and software engineer. He studied piano with Trevor Barnard and organ with John Mallinson at the University of Melbourne, and later studied composition with Maestro Joe Paparone. He holds a BMus(Hons) in pianoforte performance and a BSc in computer science.

Rowan received the outstanding pianist award in the 1996 Dandenong Festival of Music and Art for Youth, and more recently the Melbourne Fringe Festival Music Award in 2005 and in 2008 for his eclectic "Vince in Recital" piano concerts.

Alongside his solo piano work, Rowan has appeared with various diverse groups including the Victorian Youth Symphony Orchestra, Q chamber ensemble, cabaret-opera act "Profane Primadonnas", and indie-pop band Wellyn. He has repetiteured for Melbourne Opera, struggled valiantly to teach keyboards to primary school children for three quarters of a year, and is the regular accompanist for the Essendon Choral Society.

Rowan's work is directed at presenting the art of the keyboard instrument in exciting, off beat, and technologically savvy ways. He is currently refining the design of a next-generation keyboard synthesizer that he co-developed at engineering house Grey Innovation, and is writing some pieces to exploit its unique capabilities for performance in 2010. He is also working on an album of solo piano music that borrows from the digital riffs of retro '80s computer games.

Rowan has released an independent CD, "Rhapsodic Piano from Bach to Gershwin and Beyond", and is working on a new disc of Spanish and French composers.

2009 performances include Beethoven's Choral Fantasia in august with the Essendon Choral Society and Melbourne Opera Orchestra, and a new recital program in september entitled "Schumann and the Art of Piano Destruction", wherein Schumann's magnificent Fantasy Opus 17 leads into the on-stage destruction of an old piano that is laden with microphones and digital effects.

You can keep up to date with Rowan's musical activities at www.musicmakeplay.com or by sending your email address to rowan@musicmakeplay.com with 'SUBSCRIBE' in the subject line.

Here are some publicity shots (click for bigger image):

Prior Gigs (VIR gigs are here)

"Sacred Selections and Shall We?" - Melbourne International Arts Festival - From Chopin to black metal, the organ is taken to the extreme in a night of hard core musical exploration. Organ transcriptions curated by British contemporary artist Matt Stokes are played by Rowan Vince and Tim McKenry. Then Ollie McGill (Cat Empire) is playing some new works of his own. Finally organ wizard Cameron Carpenter teams up with UK musician and DJ Bishi to perform a diverse repertoire ranging from work on their own albums through to pieces from ancient Sanskrit, from Chopin to Disney.

12 oct 2009. 7.30 pm. Melbourne Town Hall.