Saltburn-by-the-sea soprano Rowan Pierce was awarded the President’s Award by HRH Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, at the Royal College of Music in 2017. She won both the Song Prize and First Prize at the inaugural Grange Festival International Singing Competition in 2017, the first Schubert Society Singer Prize in 2014 and the Van Someren Godfery Prize at the RCM.
She was a Britten Pears young artist, Samling artist, a Rising Star of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a Harewood Artist at English National Opera.
Rowan made her BBC Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall in 2017 with the OAE and returned in 2019 for Handel’s Jephtha and 2023 for Mendelssohn’s Elijah, both with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. She made her Wigmore Hall debut in 2017 with the London Handel Players and has subsequently appeared there with many other chamber ensembles in both early and late repertoire.
Rowan performs on concert platforms worldwide, appearing regularly with ensembles including the Academy of Ancient Music, Dunedin Consort, Early Opera Company, Les Arts Florissants, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Gabrieli Consort, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Royal Northern Sinfonia.
Other highlights include performances with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Les Violons du Roy, Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Freiburg Baroque, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC NOW and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Visits to the US in 2019 included appearances with the OAE at the Lincoln Center in New York, with the Academy of Ancient Music in San Francisco and at the Disney Hall in Los Angeles. She also gave a recital at the Kennedy Center, Washington with Richard Egarr and William Carter in January 2020 and toured in New York with Philharmonia Baroque, singing music by Henry Purcell in 2021 at Caramoor Festival and the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park.
Nominated for The Times Sky Arts Award for opera in 2020, her operatic roles have included: Belinda / Dido and Aeneas, Galatea / Acis & Galatea, Iris / Semele, Iphis and Angel / Jephtha, Dorinda / Orlando, Elsie / Yeoman of the Guard, Tiny / Paul Bunyan, Papagena / The Magic Flute, Barbarina / The Marriage of Figaro, Papiria / Lucio Papirio Dittatore. She has performed multiple roles in Purcell’s King Arthur and The Fairy Queen and Quivera and Orazia / The Indian Queen with Opéra de Lille, Opéra de Luxembourg, Opéra de Caen and Antwerp Opera under Emmanuelle Haïm. Rowan made her Glyndebourne Festival debut as Oberto / Alcina in 2022 and sung the same role for the Staatstheater Stuttgart that year. In 2022/23 she made her Royal Opera House début singing Papagena and in 2024 played the role of Dede in Oliver Mears’ new production of Leonard Bernstein’s opera A Quiet Place at the Linbury Theatre, ROH.
Rowan has also performed Drusilla in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea as a Britten Pears Young Artist and roles as a Samling Artist included Susanna in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Miss Wordsworth in Britten’s Albert Herring and Princess in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges.
Festival and recital performances have included collaborations with Sir Thomas Allen and Christopher Glynn in the Ryedale Festival, Dame Ann Murray, Sholto Kynoch and Malcolm Martineau in the Oxford Lieder Festival and Roger Vignoles in the Leeds Lieder Festival. 2019 saw her appear in a staged production of the Wolf Italian Songbook at the Barbican, Chiltern and Ryedale Festivals as well as a shared recital with Roderick Williams and Christopher Glynn at the Swaledale Festival. She appeared in the 2019 Edinburgh International Festival with the English Concert as Amore / Gluck’s Orfeo and returned to the festival in 2021 with the RSNO.
Although Rowan has been much acclaimed for her interpretation of Baroque and Early Music she has also been applauded for her performances of a wider repertoire including English song and Lieder by composers such as Mahler, Richard Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Britten and Bernstein. She has also premiered works by composers including Iain Bell and Julian Philips.
Her discography includes Purcell ‘The Cares of Lovers’ with Richard Egarr and William Carter (Linn Records), 2019 BBC Music Magazine Opera Award winner Acis and Galatea with the Early Opera Company / Christian Curnyn (Chandos), An English Coronation and King Arthur (BBC Music Magazine Opera Award nominee 2020) with the Gabrieli Consort / McCreesh (Signum), Vaughan Williams Symphony No 7 ‘Antartica’ with the RLPO / Manze (Onyx). She was the voice of the singer Siena Rosso in the Neflix series Bridgerton. Her most recent recording is a disc of Schubert songs with Roderick Williams and Christopher Glynn for Signum.