Kenneth Bowen
Tenor who performed at the Investiture of the Prince of Wales
KENNETH BOWEN, who has died aged 86, was a much-loved Welsh tenor and vocal teacher; he returned to the principality on many occasions, including to perform at the Investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon Castle in 1969 and at the opening of St David’s Hall, Cardiff, in 1982.
He was particularly popular as a soloist in the great choral society oratorios, claiming to have sung in more than 200 performances of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. He lost count of the number of Messiahs he had sung, although in one December alone there were 17. “Did my first one in 1954,” he reminisced in the mid1980s, noting that choirs were by then increasingly plucking soloists from within their own ranks rather than engaging professional singers.
Bowen, whose repertoire ranged from Monteverdi and Bach to Britten and Stravinsky, was a passionate champion of Welsh music and composers, including Alun Hoddinott and William Mathias, both of whom wrote works for him. In 2015 he was in the top 30 in a BBC poll to name “Wales’s greatest living voice”, though Shakin’ Stevens was No 1.
Kenneth John Bowen was born at Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, on August 3 1932 and educated at Llanelli grammar school. He studied at Aberystwyth University and was then a choral scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge, under George Guest.
In March 1954 Bowen took part in a staging of Handel’s oratorio Athalia at Girton College in which, according to Opera magazine, he was an “outstanding success” putting “a remarkable appreciation of hell-fire into his great air in the last act”.
His professional debut was as a “clear, lyrical” Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress with the New Opera Company at Sadler’s Wells in 1957. The next two years were spent on National Service as a flying officer with the Education Branch of the RAF.
After demobilisation he became a regular soloist at the Three Choirs Festival, singing his first Gerontius there in 1960. During the early part of that decade he won prizes in singing competitions at Geneva, ’s-hertogenbosch, Liverpool and Munich.
Bowen appeared at the Proms on 15 occasions, his first being in 1964 in a performance of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast conducted by Malcolm Sargent to mark the 20th anniversary of the death of Henry Wood. He sang Tamino in The Magic Flute at the Coliseum, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni for Glyndebourne Touring Opera under Raymond Leppard, and Hermes in the 1967 revival of Tippett’s opera King Priam at Covent Garden conducted by John Pritchard.
He was appointed professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music in 1967 and from 1987 to 1991 served as a kindly and thoughtful head of vocal studies. His students included the broadcaster Aled Jones and the future opera singers Neal Davies, Huw Rhys-evans and Brindley Sherratt.
In 1983, five years before his retirement as a professional singer, Bowen was founding conductor of the London Welsh Chorale. His first language was Welsh, and when he stepped down in 2008 he was presented with a CD containing a collection of Welsh songs from four LPS he had made early in his career. He was also an adjudicator at numerous National Eisteddfods.
Bowen, who enjoyed a round of golf, was awarded an honorary doctorate by Bangor University in 2003.
He married Angela in 1959, although they separated in 1995. He is survived by two sons, both of whom followed him into the music business: Geraint is organist and director of music at Hereford Cathedral and an artistic director of the Three Choirs Festival; Meurig was director of the Cheltenham Music Festival and is now artistic planning manager at the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.