Tony Rowe

Conductor Tony Rowe has released several albums, including one of the very few in existence featuring music by early American composer William Henry Fry. He also teaches mathematics at the university level. Rowe was born in Manchester, England, in 1961. He attended the Manchester Grammar School, studying both mathematics and music as well as physics, chemistry, and several foreign languages. Rowe went on to Cambridge University, earning a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics in 1983. He continued for a master's degree in physics at Cambridge, also studying the history and philosophy of science. While at Cambridge, Rowe founded and led the Oxford and Cambridge Chamber Orchestra and was also active as an assistant conductor under Philip Ledger, and that aspect of his interests came to the fore for a time. He traveled to the U.S. for a second master's degree in orchestral conducting at Indiana University. While there, he served as assistant conductor at the school's Opera Theater. Rowe began to rack up major conducting honors, including first prize at the Liverpool Conducting Competition in 1988 and, that same year, the Fulton Memorial Fellowship for studies at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts; he worked there with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. He became assistant conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra in New York. He later served as music director of the Vassar Orchestra (he served as assistant professor at Vassar College for nine years) and conductor of the Westchester Conservatory Orchestra in White Plains, New York. In 2000, Rowe made his recording debut on the Naxos label, leading the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in a performance, apparently the first ever recorded, of the Santa Claus Symphony (Santa Claus, A Christmas Symphony) of composer William Henry Fry. He made several more recordings for Naxos, leading the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in symphonies by Havergal Brian. At that point, his scientific interests once again gained the upper hand, and in 2002, he took a job as a lecturer in mathematics and physics at California State University at Northridge. He continued to hold that position as of the mid-2020s. He has also served as conductor of the Pomona College Orchestra, and he has stated that he considers specialization a modern phenomenon; in the past, he believes, many people pursued activities in multiple fields. Rowe's recording of the Santa Claus Symphony remained the only one available as of 2024.
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