As a specialist in historical bassoon, Jane Gower performs extensively throughout Europe, the United States and Australia. She is very active in chamber music and as a soloist, appears with the finest early music orchestras, and has a growing and diverse collection of original instruments on which she also performs.

Jane was performing with the Sydney Symphony, Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Australia Ensemble while still an undergraduate; she received her Bachelor of Music degree with High Distinction from the Canberra School of Music in 1992. With the support of a Netherlands Government Scholarship and a Queen’s Trust grant she undertook four years of post-graduate studies in historical bassoon at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

Jane is principal bassoonist of Concerto Copenhagen, the Orchestra of the the Age of Enlightenment and since 1994 of Anima Eterna Brugge, performing and recording repertoire ranging from Buxtehude and Bach to Tchaikovsky and Orff, as well as the complete symphonies of Schubert and Beethoven. For many years she was principal bassoon of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s acclaimed English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. She returns regularly to her native Australia to perform with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra as well as the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, of which she is a founding member.

In 1999 Jane founded the quartet "island" with the aim of exploring the extraordinary 19th century repertoire for bassoon and strings, and with them has performed throughout Europe and Australia, also recording four premiere CDs on original instruments of Devienne, Danzi, Krommer and Reicha. Additionally her recent chamber music partners include recorder player Genevieve Lacey, fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout, violinist John Holloway and harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen, with whom she has recorded for the prestigious ECM label. In 2005 Jane Gower was Musical Director of the Barossa Music Festival, South Australia, and together with Torbreck Vintners launched the chamber music series Barossa Klassik in January 2010.

Jane has given numerous masterclasses in Baroque and Classical bassoon and has tutored for the Wilanów Academy in Warsaw, the Jeune Orchestre Atlantique in Saintes and the European Union Baroque Orchestra. From 2007–2012 she was a Professor at the Royal College of Music, London.

Solo engagements include a national tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, tours with Concerto Copenhagen, the Fundacja Concert Spirituel in Warsaw, Les Agrémens in Brussels, Holland Baroque Society in Amsterdam, and Florilegium in London. Solo recordings include three bassoon concertos by Franz Danzi, with the Orchester von Damals und Heute, Germany, and a newly discovered concerto by Henri Joseph De Croes with Terra Nova Collective, Belgium. Her recent recording of the infamously difficult bassoon parts of Zelenka’s six trio sonatas with the Prague-based Collegium 1704 was awarded a Diapason d’Or. In 2002 she recorded Mozart's Bassoon Concerto with Anima Eterna Brugge and she tours regularly with the piece. Her cadenzas and performance practice notes for Mozart’s concerto have been published by Bärenreiter.

Jane Gower has been performing regularly with the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra since the orchestra’s launch concert in 2013.

Click here to listen to our playlist of selected recordings featuring bassoonist Jane Gower.