Ceri Owen

Ceri Owen is a music historian, pianist and song accompanist, and writer. She is currently working on a new biography of Vaughan Williams, as well as editing a book of essays on his work for Cambridge University Press.

Owen's research grows out of her work as a performer. Her creative practice draws together interests in the history of song composition and performance; the role of music and musical performance in subject and identity formations; and in musical biography and autobiography. In her writing she has explored various aspects of the twentieth-century British song tradition, looking through the lens of performance to ask what performers have to tell us about this repertoire and its meanings for audiences, both historically and today.

She wrote her doctoral thesis on ideas of identity, place, and tradition in the music, writings, and reception of Ralph Vaughan Williams. She's since published articles, essays, and reviews on Vaughan Williams and on British musical culture more broadly.

As a pianist Ceri Owen has performed widely in the UK and further afield, giving recitals at such venues as the Barbican Hall, Kings Place, Milton Court, and St Martin-in-the Fields, London; the Holywell Music Room, Oxford; the Barber Institute, Birmingham; the Internationale-Hugo-Wolf-Akademie, Stuttgart; and as part of the BBC Proms Plus Festival.

She has recently founded the Cambridge Song Festival, a brand new festival devoted to the creation and celebration of song, launching in February 2019.