Jane Gower

As a specialist in historical bassoon, Jane Gower performs extensively throughout Europe, the United States and Australia. She is very active in chamber music and as a soloist, appears with the finest early music orchestras, and has a growing, diverse collection of original instruments on which she also performs.
Jane Gower was performing with the Sydney Symphony, Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Australia Ensemble while still an undergraduate; she received her Bachelor of Music degree with High Distinction from the Canberra School of Music in 1992. With the support of a Netherlands Government Scholarship and a Queen’s Trust grant she studied historical bassoon at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, completing her performance diploma in early music in 1996.
In 2005 Jane Gower was appointed Principal Bassoon of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s acclaimed English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. She has been Principal Bassoon with Jos van Immerseel’s orchestra Anima Eterna for many years, performing and recording repertoire ranging from Buxtehude and Bach to Tchaikovsky and Janacek, as well as the complete symphonies of Schubert and Beethoven. Additionally she is the Principal Bassoon of Concerto Copenhagen, and appears as Principal with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (with Sir Simon Rattle and Vladimir Jurowski), The Academy of Ancient Music, La Petite Bande, Les Arts Florissants, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. She returns regularly to her native Australia to perform with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
In addition to “island”, her diverse chamber music activities include most recently concerts with fortepianist Kris Bezuidenhout, and violinist John Holloway and harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen, with whom she has recorded for the prestigious ECM label. In 2005 Jane Gower was Musical Director of the Barossa Music Festival, South Australia, and together with Torbreck Vintners launched the chamber music series Barossa Klassik in January 2010.
Jane Gower has given masterclasses in Baroque and Classical bassoon in Antwerp and St Petersburg as well as in Australia. She tutors for the Wilanów Academy in Warsaw, the Jeune Orchestre Atlantique in Saintes and the European Union Baroque Orchestra. From 2007-2012 she was a Professor at the Royal College of Music, London.
Solo engagements have included a national tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, tours with Concerto Copenhagen, the Fundacja Concert Spirituel in Warsaw, Les Agrémens in Belgium, Holland Baroque Society in the Netherlands, and Sirius Ensemble in Australia. In 2002 she recorded Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto with Anima Eterna for the label Zig-Zag Territoires, and she tours regularly with the piece. Her cadenzas and performance practice notes for this concerto have been published by Bärenreiter. Her latest solo recording is of three bassoon concertos by Franz Danzi, with the Orchester von Damals und Heute, Germany.