Robin Bowman’s international career as an accompanist and chamber-music pianist spans more than forty years; he has numbered Gérard Souzay, Dawn Upshaw, Henry Herford, Lynne Dawson, Penelope Mackay, Richard Jackson and Katarina Jovanovic among his many performing partnerships.
He was a coach for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and French Consultant for the London National Opera Studio for the first thirty years of its existence. Robin gained his unique depth of experience in French vocal repertoire from work as assistant to Pierre Bernac, the great French baritone and authority on singing in French for whom Poulenc wrote more than half of his songs. Robin’s numerous broadcasts and discography as a collaborative pianist consist mainly of English language and French language repertoire. From 1997 until 2008 Robin was Head of Vocal Studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Since retirement from this post he has been a visiting tutor at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and has also recently completed a four-year term as specialist external assessor for the vocal department of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. In 2013 Robin was on the jury of the Kathleen Ferrier prize and, along with Linda Esther Gray, was asked to give the Kathleen Ferrier masterclasses that year. For a number of years he gave masterclasses in audition technique for the Oxford Lieder Festival.