Owen Rees
Owen Rees is a choral conductor, organist, and musicologist, and his various activities, by his own testimony, reinforce one another. He is a professor at Oxford University and organist and choir director at Queen's College there.
Rees was born in 1964. He attended St. Catharine's College, Cambridge University, studying music and supporting himself as an organ scholar, a musician whose expenses are defrayed in return for his contributions to the college's musical life. He stayed on for a doctorate at Cambridge, studying musicology with Renaissance specialists Peter le Huray and Iain Fenlon. By the time he finished his dissertation in 1991, he had already begun teaching at St. Peter’s College and St. Edmund Hall at Oxford as a lecturer. He moved to the University of Surrey as a reader (a rank between lecturer and professor) in 1996. He moved to Oxford in 1997, assuming the posts of Lecturer in the Faculty of Music; Fellow, Tutor, and Organist of Queen’s College; and Senior Research Fellow of Somerville College; he was promoted to Reader in 2006 and continues to hold these posts.
As Queen's College organist, Rees conducts the Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford, and he has also conducted the Cambridge Taverner Choir, Contrapunctus, and A Cappella Portuguesa. He has stated that his research activities often inform the repertory he programs as a choir director and that the influence also runs in the opposite direction. As a scholar, Rees has edited works by composers Manuel Cardoso, Pedro de Cristo, and Duarte Lobo, and he has also programmed the music of these little-known figures in concert. Rees has led choirs in concert at the Oslo Kirchenmusic Festival, Festival International Portico de Semana Santa de Zamora, and the York Early Music Festival. He conducts the Choir of Queen's College in chapel services three times a week during school terms, as well as at various other events.
Rees has a catalog of more than 20 albums as director of various groups on Hyperion, Herald Records, Guild, and other labels. Since 2013, he has led the Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford, and Contrapunctus in a series of recordings of mostly English choral music. In 2020, Rees issued a pair of new releases, one featuring Contrapunctus and the Choir of The Queen's College in Taverner's multi-textural Missa Gloria tibi trinitatis, and another with Contrapunctus, Salve, Salve, Salve: Josquin's Spanish Legacy.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Taverner : Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas
Contrapunctus, Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Feb 22, 2019
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
In the Midst of Life: Music from the Baldwin Partbooks I
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Feb 9, 2015
Gramophone Editor's Choice16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Libera Nos: The Cry of the Oppressed
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Jul 1, 2013
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Virgin and Child: Music from the Baldwin Partbooks II
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Feb 3, 2017
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
A New Heaven
Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford, Owen Rees
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Feb 24, 2017
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Dixit Dominus: Handel • Scarlatti
The Brook Street Band, Owen Rees, Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford
Classical - Released by AVIE Records on May 13, 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The House of the Mind
The Choir of the Queen's College Oxford, Owen Rees
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Jun 1, 2018
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Now may we singen
Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford, Owen Rees
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Oct 13, 2020
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Tristitia et anxietas
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Jan 5, 2021
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
In dulci jubilo
Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford, Owen Rees, John Laurence
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Oct 8, 2020
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Domine quis habitabit
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Jan 21, 2021
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
A Ceremony of Carols: II. Wolcum Yole!
Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford, Owen Rees, Lucy Wakeford
Classical - Released by Signum Records on Sep 23, 2020
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Caeli Porta - 17th Century Sacred Music from Lisbon & Granada
The Choir of the Queen's College Oxford, Owen Rees
Classical - Released by Guild GmbH on Nov 15, 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Music from Renaissance Portugal
The Cambridge Taverner Choir, Owen Rees
Classical - Released by Herald on Dec 29, 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
What Is Our Life? Renaissance Laments and Elegies
The Cambridge Taverner Choir, Owen Rees
Classical - Released by Herald on May 21, 1996
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Song the Virgine Soong: Christmas Music from Tudor England
Cambridge Tavener Choir, Owen Rees
Christmas Music - Released by Herald on Nov 17, 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Music from Renaissance Portugal II
Cambridge Tavener Choir, Owen Rees, Stephen Farr
Classical - Released by Herald on Oct 7, 2002
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Monteverdi: Missa in illo tempore
Cambridge Taverner Choir, Owen Rees, Caroline Balding, Roger Hamilton
Choral Music (Choirs) - Released by Herald on Apr 28, 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
How Are The Mighty Fallen: Choral Music by Giovanni Bononcini
Owen Rees, The Choir of Queen's College, Oxford, Academy of Ancient Music
Classical - To be released on May 24, 2024 by Signum Records
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
When Saul was king: IV. All the night she weepeth sore
Classical - Released by Signum Records on May 8, 2024
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Masters of The Royal Chapel, Lisbon (Portuguese Renaissance Music 1)
A Capella Portuguesa, Owen Rees
Classical - Released by Hyperion on May 1, 1994
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo