Rowen previously led Phoenix between 2012 and 2022, and we are delighted that he is returning as Musical Director in 2026.

Rowen studied composition with Peter Brideoake at the University of Adelaide, and received his Masters degree from the Sydney Conservatorium, studying under Anne Boyd. He specialises in writing vocal and choral music, and music for the theatre and live performance.

Rowen has been conducting classical and popular community choirs in the Blue Mountains for over a decade. He is the Musical Director of Penrith City Choir and Chorus Director of the Penrith Symphony Orchestra Festival Chorus. He also conducts the Moo Choir in Warrimoo and, with Christine Wheeler, the Heathens Choir in Blackheath.

Rowen’s works are inspired by the natural world, with his compositions reflecting aspects of the local Blue Mountains landscape, the arid interior of his earliest childhood memories, and his travels to spectacular and remote regions such as the Canadian Northwest Territories, Scandinavia, Greenland, Iceland, Germany and Greece.

Rowen’s full-length chamber opera Chang’E and the Moon premiered at the Sydney Conservatorium and in Wentworth Falls in 2016. The opera grew out of Rowen’s deep regard for Chinese classical literature and music, and is an inspired retelling of the myth of the Chinese Goddess of the Moon, Chang’E. It is also a poem to the physical moon as a part of our landscape, and a meditation on nature’s cycles, reflecting Rowen’s interest in philosophical Taoism.

Rowen is currently putting the finishing touches to his oratorio Albert Morris, partly commissioned by Phoenix Choir, based on the life of the pioneering Broken Hill bush regenerator. Another recently commissioned choral work is All This is Ended (2018), a setting of Rupert Brooke’s 1914 poem The Dead. Commissioned by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs as a part of the Armistice Centenary Grants Program, this work is dedicated to the memory of all those, civilian and military, who lost their lives in the Great War.