Bradford Gowen

Bradford Gowen has received national attention since winning first prize in the 1978 Kennedy Center/Rockefeller Foundation International Competition for Excellence in the Performance of American Music. After winning the American music prize, Mr. Gowen made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall and recorded an album of American music for New World Records; in Spring 1998 his recording, Exultation, was re-released as a CD with additional, newly-recorded pieces included. On Memorial Day 1980, he performed Aaron Copland's Piano Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer; the next year he performed several more times with that orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich and Maxim Shostakovich. He has appeared for 30 years in duets with his wife, pianist Maribeth Gowen. In addition to performing, Mr. Gowen has written for The Piano Quarterly and Piano & Keyboard for more than 20 years. In 2002 he wrote a major series of three articles on twentieth-century American piano music for the London-based International Piano. Mr. Gowen has also served as a judge for several international piano competitions, including the Kapell, Gina Bachauer and Sydney, and he was a member of the advisory committee that created and ran the Seventeen magazine/General Motors National Concerto Competition.

Since 1981, Mr. Gowen has been on the faculty at the University of Maryland, where he was chair of the piano division from 1990 to 1994; he taught at the Levine School of Music (Washington, DC) from 2004 to 2006, and since 2005 he has been on the faculty of the Washington Conservatory of Music. He is one of the forty-eight pianists featured in Benjamin Saver's 1993 book The Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the USA.

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