Meet Charlotte Rowan
Charlotte Rowan is regarded as one of Britain's leading violin virtuosos. Her communicative power, dazzling technique and sublime tone have resonated strongly with audiences and attracted new listeners to the violinistic genre.
Her performances combine technical mastery with lyricism and clarity of expression, communicating an artistry that feels both spontaneous and deeply considered.
She performs widely across the United Kingdom, as well as developing an international profile with solo appearances in Germany and the USA.
Praised for her innovation in recital programmes, Charlotte explores both the timeless and contemporary, and is an advocate for music that can speak and resonate with the spirit of our current millennium.
Her recent and upcoming projects include a series of programmes exploring music’s dialogue with human experience — Despair and Transcendence, Liebe und Leben, and The Rest is Silence: Music of the Oppressed. These programmes reflect her belief in the power of classical music to illuminate and perhaps challenge contemporary life and give voice to complex emotional and social landscapes.
She is passionate about the continuous evolution of classical music as a living, vital artform - one that renews itself through dialogue with diverse influences and human experiences.
Charlotte is a graduate with High Honours from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, USA, where she was invited to study age sixteen, as a recipient of the Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Scholarship. In her first year, she served as concertmistress of the Conservatory Undergraduate Orchestra, performing under Leon Fleischer. She has featured on the Washington Performing Arts Series with Rob Kapilow and performed for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in Washington, D.C.
A regular soloist with orchestras in both Britain and America, Charlotte has performed concerti by Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Dvořák, Glazunov and Elgar. She has collaborated with conductors including Martin Binks MBE and the Leeds Symphony Orchestra.
Together with her duo partner, pianist Charlotte Stevenson, she has appeared in recital at distinguished venues and chamber music societies touring widely across Scotland, Yorkshire, Wales, Southern England, the Midlands, Essex, Kent, and East Anglia.
Artist-in-Residence at the 2019 Wetherby Arts Festival, Charlotte has received critically acclaimed reviews at festivals including Edinburgh, East Devon, Buckingham, Harwich, Horsham, and Crail.
In 2023, her tour of Scotland included performances in the Orkney Islands where she also led a workshop on violin-making and sound production for the Orkney International Science Festival - an event reflecting her curiosity for the instrument’s craftsmanship and acoustical qualities.
Charlotte's teachers have included Jennifer Willmer, Jerre Gibson and Violaine Melancon and she has performed in masterclasses for Midori and the Juilliard String Quartet.
Based in Cambridge, UK, Charlotte is a teacher of violin and chamber music at The Perse School, St Faith’s Cambridge, and The King’s School, Ely.
Charlotte performs on a Fridolin Rusch violin (2005) of Memmingen, Bavaria.
Away from the concert stage, she finds inspiration in languages, beautiful gardens, medieval castles and climbing through mountain landscapes — from the Lofoten Islands in Norway to the Tzoumerka Mountains of Greece.