Sleaford Choral Musical Director
Rowland's career as a composer, arranger and conductor encompasses the worlds of TV, Theatre, Ballet and concert music. For the choreographer Sir Matthew Bourne, Rowland orchestrated Swan Lake, now the world's most performed dance production, and Nutcracker. A film of the 2021 production of this at Sadler's Wells Theatre was broadcast by the BBC during Christmas 2022, following a limited cinema release.
Rowland's Requiem, published by Edition Peters, received its American premiere in late 2021 as part of California's memorial to those lost through Covid. Among his 700-plus TV composer credits, he is probably best known for the children's series Cloudbabies, 64 Zoo Lane and Engie Benjy, although he also orchestrated most of seasons V and VI of Endeavour, and has worked as arranger and orchestrator on many other programmes.
Rowland was musical arranger and supervising musical director for A Spoonful of Sherman, which commenced its UK Tour and was in performance at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln in May 2018. In 1986, he was the first recipient of the British Film Institute's Anthony Asquith Young Composer Award (now a BAFTA).
Rowland is proud to have been associated with the Sleaford Choral Society, firstly as an accompanist and now its Musical Director and conductor, for more than 10 years.
OTHER INTERESTS
Rowland both collects and restores player pianos and reed organs, reproducing pianos and associated instruments and he is the committee chair of the Player Piano Group of Great Britain. He is a passionate student of architecture of all periods, with special interest in that of the nineteenth and early twentienth centuries, being a former voluntary case worker for the Victorian Society.
Rowland is also a scholar of the life and works of the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and an author of a dissertation on this subject, published in 1983. He is also co-author of the programme note for the British premiere of Korngold’s opera, “Die Tote Stadt” at the South Bank Centre, performed in 1998.