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“quite possibly the most interesting pianist in the world” Globe & Mail, Toronto
Website www. davidowennorris.com
Contact Jessica Hill Email jessica @ikonarts.com
David Owen Norris is one of the most innovative and brilliant pianists of our generation, being an authority and leading p erformer on early pianos, rare piano concertos (especially those by 20th century English composers), as well as being the pianist of choice for many world class singers. His work as a concert pianist has taken him round the world for forty years – ‘quite possibly the most interesting pianist in the world!’ says the Toronto Globe & Mail , while his latest piano solo CD got a double five star review in BBC Music Magazine in the spring. He was the first winner of the Gilmore Artist Award.
David Owen Norris’s Symphony was premiered in 2013, and he’s just revised his Piano Concerto: there are plans to record both in January 2015, for broadcast and commercial CD. His cantata, STERNE, was THE MAN, commissioned to mark the tercentenary of the experimental novelist Laurence Sterne, was premiered in York Minster last autumn, and receives more performances later this month at Winchester College and Poole Parish Church. Norris’s song cycle Think only this, to poetry of the Great War, will be performed in the Turner Sim s at Southampton in November. He is currently working on HengeMusic for organ, saxophones and film, and planning an opera on John Clare with the poet Paul Farley.
He contributed ten features to BBCRadio 3’s Great War season this summer, and television vie wers were delighted by the return of ‘Chord of the Week’ on BBC2’s Proms Extra. His recent programme on Holst’s Planets stirred up a familiar Twitter storm, with Michael Kennedy declaring ‘This will go down as one of the great classics of Building a Librar y.’ ‘Sign this man up for a series!’ said the Sunday Times, after his celebrated deconstruction of ‘Jerusalem’ on BBC4; ‘deserves a gold medal’ said the Daily Telegraph of his fourth Playlist series on Radio 4, adding, at the start of the new series, ‘anot her gem from David Owen Norris’.
David Owen Norris, who was chosen to be the First Gilmore Artist by the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in 1991, is Professor of Musical Performance at the University of Southampton, Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music and at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. He performs around the world on both modern pianos and ancient fortepianos.
His unusually varied career has seen him as a repetiteur at the Royal Opera House, harpist at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Artistic Director of the Petworth Festival & the Cardiff International Festival, Gresham Pr ofessor of Music, and Chairman of the Steans Institute for Singers at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago.
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