Owen Rees

Owen Rees is both an acclaimed choral director and an internationally recognised scholar of Renaissance music, particularly from Spain, Portugal, and England. He has brought to the concert hall and recording studio substantial repertories of magnificent Renaissance and Baroque music, including many previously unknown or little-known works, and he has played a leading role in revealing the glories of Portuguese Renaissance polyphony to an international audience. He directs the professional vocal consort Contrapunctus and the Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford. He is Professor in Music at the University of Oxford and Fellow of The Queen’s College. His numerous CD recordings encompass a wide variety of choral repertory from the Renaissance to contemporary music, and his work has three times been nominated for a Gramophone Award. His published work as a scholar includes studies and editions of the principal Spanish composers of the ‘Golden Age’ (Morales, Guerrero, and Victoria), the Portuguese Renaissance masters Cardoso, Lobo, and Magalhães, and the great Tudor composers Tallis and Byrd. He has recently published a book about the Victoria Requiem for Cambridge University Press.