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The English soprano, Rowan Pierce, studied with Amanda Roocroft and Simon Lepper at the Royal College of Music. She was awarded the President’s Award by HRH Prince of Wales at the Royal College of Music in 2017. She won both the Song Prize and First Prize at the inaugural Grange Festival International Singing Competition in 2017, the Van Someren Godfery Prize at the RCM and the first Schubert Society Singer Prize in 2014. She was a Britten Pears young artist, a Rising Star of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a Harewood Artist at English National Opera. She was generously supported by the Countess of Munster Award and Midori Nishiura at the RCM.
Rowan Pierce has appeared on the concert platform throughout Europe and in South America and performs regularly with ensembles including the Academy of Ancient Music, Gabrieli Consort, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Florilegium, Royal Northern Sinfonia and The English Concert. In 2017 she made her BBC Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and her Wigmore Hall debut with the London Handel Players and returned with Florilegium in the 2019-2020 season. Recent and future highlights include performances with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Early Opera Company at the Concertgebouw, the Academy of Ancient Music, Gabrieli Consort, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Polyphony, La Nuova Musica and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Visits to the USA in 2019 included appearances with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Lincoln Center in New York, with the Academy of Ancient Music in San Francisco and at the Disney Hall in Los Angeles. She also gave a recital at the Kennedy Center, Washington with Richard Egarr and William Carter in January 2020. 2019 also included her debut at the Edinburgh Festival, concerts with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Freiburger Barockorchester and a return to the BBC Proms in a performance of George Frideric Handel's Jephtha with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Richard Egarr.
Operatic roles have included Drusilla in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (as a Britten Pears Young Artist), Galatea in G.F. Handel's Acis & Galatea, Iris in G.F. Handel's Semele, Susanna in W.A. Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (as a Samling Artist), Miss Wordsworth, Emmie and Cis in Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring (as a Samling Artist) and Princess in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges (as a Samling Artist) as well as, most recently Barbarina in W.A. Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro for Nevill Holt Opera and The Grange Festival. She was made a Harewood Artist at English National Opera in 2018 and roles have included Tiny in B. Britten's Paul Bunyan as well as Papagena in W.A. Mozart's The Magic Flute with future roles including Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro. She made her debut at the Buxton Festival in 2019 in the role of Papiria in a production of Antonio Caldara's Lucio Papirio Dittatore with La Serenissima. Opera engagements in 2020 include the roles of Quivera and Orazia in The Indian Queen for Opéra de Lille under Emmanuelle Haïm, as well as Oberto in G.F. Handel's Alcina for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Barbarina at Covent Garden and various roles in performances of both Purcell’s King Arthur and the Fairy Queen with the Gabrieli Consort.
Festival and recital performances have included collaborations with Sir Thomas Allen and Christopher Glynn in the Ryedale Festival, Dame Ann Murray, Sholto Kynoch and Malcolm Martineau in the Oxford Lieder Festival and Roger Vignoles in the Leeds Lieder Festival. 2019 saw her appear in a staged production of the Wolf's Italian Songbook at the Barbican, Chiltern and Ryedale Festivals as well as a shared recital with Roderick Williams and Christopher Glynn at the Swaledale Festival. She appeared in the 2019 Edinburgh International Festival with The English Concert as Amore in Gluck’s Orfeo.
Although Rowan Pierce has been much acclaimed for her interpretation of Baroque and Early Music she has also been applauded for her performances of a wider repertoire including English song and Lieder by composers such as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten. She has also premiered works by composers including Iain Bell, Julian Philps and Alex Woolf.
Her discography includes Purcell ‘The Cares of Lovers’ with Richard Egarr and William Carter (Linn Records), 2019 BBC Music Magazine Opera Award winner Acis and Galatea with the Early Opera Company / Christian Curnyn (Chandos), An English Coronation and King Arthur (BBC Music Magazine Opera Award nominee 2020) with the Gabrieli Consort / Paul McCreesh (Signum), Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony No 7 Antartica with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze (Onyx). She was the soprano voice behind the opera singer Siena Rosso (embodied by the actress Sabrina Bartlett) in the successful TV series Bridgerton. |
