Dr Ceri Owen

Dr Ceri Owen

Department of Music
Lecturer in Performance and Director of Performance

Contact details

Address
University 麻豆精选
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

I am a pianist and musicologist. I work on intersections between music, identity, and performance, and on music and musicians in Britain and Ireland during the late nineteenth- and twentieth centuries. As a professional pianist I appear at leading concert halls and festivals in the UK and further afield, and collaborate with both classical and traditional musicians.

Qualifications

  • BA in Music, University of Oxford
  • MPhil in Musicology, University of Cambridge
  • DPhil in Music, University of Oxford
  • AGSM and MPerf in Song Accompaniment and Chamber Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London

Biography

I am a pianist and musicologist, and am Lecturer in Performance and Director of Performance at the University 麻豆精选.

As a performer I specialize as a collaborative pianist, and have performed extensively in Britain, Ireland, and further afield, appearing at major concert halls and festivals including the Wigmore Hall, Barbican Hall, Kings Place, and St Martin-in-the-Fields, London; the Holywell Music Room, Oxford; the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham; the Hugo-Wolf-Akademie, Stuttgart; and as part of the Oxford International Song Festival, BBC Proms Festival, and Sonorities Festival. I was awarded the Pianist's Prizes at the Grange Festival International Singing Competition (2017) and the John Kerr English Song Award (2018), and have made live and recorded broadcasts for BBC Radio 3. Regular collaborators include baritone (a former Young Artist at the Royal Opera House Covent Gardent), and Irish traditional musicians 脷na Monaghan and S铆le Denvir, with whom I founded , uniquely exploring intersections between classical and traditional musics and performance practices.聽

A passionate educator, I teach both undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University 麻豆精选, and oversee the tuition and assessment of musical performance in the Department of Music. I was previously Lecturer in Music at the University of Oxford, Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow in Song Accompaniment and Chamber Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.

A first-language Welsh speaker, I attended my local comprehensive school in North Wales before studying Music at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, holding an instrumental scholarship. I later returned to the University of Oxford to read for my DPhil (PhD), funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. I hold an MPhil in Musicology from the University of Cambridge, also funded by the AHRC. I trained as a solo and collaborative pianist at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, supported by numerous scholarships.

Teaching

I oversee the teaching and assessment of music performance in the Music Department. I convene and teach on all the music performance modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, providing performance classes, workshops, lectures, and seminars. I also contribute lectures to LC Music and Ideas, and teach LI/LH Ralph Vaughan Williams and his World.

Postgraduate supervision

I am currently supervising three PhD students, one supported by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council鈥檚 Midlands4Cities scheme, working in partnership with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

I welcome applications from research students in the following areas: practice as research; music performance studies; music and musicians in Britain and Ireland during the late nineteenth- and twentieth centuries; intersections between classical and traditional musics and performance practices; music and identity formations; song and song performance; interdisciplinary research; music and gender.


Find out more - our Music postgraduate study  page has information about doctoral research at the University 麻豆精选.

Research

My research focuses on intersections between music, identity, and performance; practice as research; and music and musicians in Britain and Ireland during the late nineteenth- and twentieth centuries. Blending historical, cultural, and practice-informed approaches, my work so far has investigated how cultural and political ideas about national identity were mediated, performed, and embodied within classical music and performance cultures in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. I have been especially interested in the work of twentieth-century composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Growing out of this research, I am also interested in intersections between classical and traditional musics, musical cultures, and performance practices, and since 2019 I have examined these intersections within聽, a collaboration with leading Irish traditional musicians and academics 脷na Monaghan and S铆le Denvir, in which we uniquely draw together Irish and Welsh traditional musics, pre-existing Western classical musics, electronics, improvisation, and experimental musical practices.

My work has appeared in international peer-review journals including聽Twentieth-Century Music,听19th-Century Music,听Music & Letters, and聽Tempo. I am co-editor and contributor to the interdisciplinary volume聽Vaughan Williams in Context聽(Cambridge University Press, 2024), and the聽19th-Century Music聽journal special issue聽Subjectivity in European Song: Time, Place, and Identity聽(2017). I am currently writing a book about the twentieth-century composer Ralph Vaughan Williams for聽.

Public Engagement & Impact. I have long been committed to communicating my research findings to a range of audiences, and together with my work as a professional musician, have contributed to numerous BBC Radio 3 programmes as an academic speaker, most recently acting as a research consultant and contributor to the series聽 I am invited to give lectures and talks for national and international festivals, and in 2020 was the research consultant and academic speaker for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society鈥檚 project In 2019 I founded a new festival, the Cambridge Song Festival.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Onderdonk, J & Owen, C (eds) 2024, . Composers in Context, Cambridge University Press.

Article

Taylor, B & Owen, C 2017, '', Nineteenth Century Music, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 185-8. <>

Owen, C 2017, '', Nineteenth Century Music, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 257-282.

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Onderdonk, J & Owen, C 2024, . in J Onderdonk & C Owen (eds), Vaughan Williams in Context. Composers in Context, Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-8.

Ingleby, M & Owen, C 2024, . in J Onderdonk & C Owen (eds), Vaughan Williams in Context. Composers in Context, Cambridge University Press, pp. 161-168.

Owen, C 2023, . in B Adams & DMG (eds), Vaughan Williams and His World. Chicago University Press, pp. 57-74. <>

Book/Film/Article review

Owen, C 2017, '', Music and Letters, vol. 98, no. 1, pp. 150-2. <>

Other contribution

Owen, C 2018, . St John's Cambridge/Signum.

Performance

Owen, C & Wake-Edwards, S, , 2022, Performance.

Owen, C, Monaghan, 脷 & Denvir, S, , 2022, Performance.

Monaghan, 脷, Owen, C & Denvir, S, , 2022, Performance.

Owen, C, , 2022, Performance.

Owen, C & Sedgwick, D, , 2019, Performance.

Owen, C, Monaghan, 脷 & Denvir, S, , 2019, Performance.

Owen, C, , 2018, Performance.

Expertise

  • Classical and Traditional Music, Musicians, Performance, and Performers in Britain and Ireland
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams
  • Song and Song Performance 
  • Music and Identity
  • Music and Politics

Languages and other information

Welsh (first language)

Media experience

BBC Radio 3: In Tune; BBC Proms; Music MattersComposer of the Week