Thomas Bowes is one of the UK’s finest violinists.

He is very active in the realm of cinema and millions have heard him on the soundtracks of his 200+ film credits. Most recently, he was featured as the solo violinist in Alexandre Desplat’s score for Guillermo del Toro’s award-winning stop-motion film Pinocchio.

His concerto appearances in Europe and the USA have included highly-praised performances of concertos by Elgar, Britten, Szymanowski, Walton and Eleanor Alberga.

Tom’s recording of the complete Bach Sonatas and Partitas was released in 2018 on the Navona label to great critical acclaim, with Laurence Vittes in Gramophone Magazine noting it was ‘deeply human…unusually communicative…a succession of miracles.’ His ‘Bach Pilgrimage’ is now a regular feature of Tom’s concert-giving, taking him to venues and local communities across the UK. In 2019 Tom received a ‘Sebastian Award’ from the Ars Ante Portas Civic Association of Bratislava, Slovakia, for his ‘Extraordinary contribution in maintaining public appreciation of the work of JS Bach’.

Navona also released Tom’s recording of the complete Ysaÿe solo Sonatas in 2020. Critics noted a rare depth of interpretation and characterisation, and the recording was nominated for the solo instrumental category of the International Classical Music Awards. A further recording of the complete Telemann Fantasias for solo violin was released on the Navona label in October ’21 and has already achieved over 300,000 plays on digital platforms.

Tom is currently developing a touring show on the extraordinary life of Niccolò Paganini. This show will be based around performances of his hair-raising Caprices for solo violin interwoven with a narration of his life, wrapped up in legend, anecdote and fact.

Between 1988 and 1993 Tom was the founding leader of the Maggini String Quartet, and together with his wife, the composer and pianist Eleanor Alberga OBE, he formed the duo Double Exposure in 1995. The duo toured extensively with concerts and broadcasts in the USA and Europe, and together they made a major tour of China in 1997, winning the hearts of their audiences wherever they played. They returned to China in November 2019.

Tom had been a constant advocate of Alberga’s music and has given first performances and made recordings of many of her works, including her two violin concertos.

Between 2003 and 2015, he was the Artistic Director of the Langvad Chamber Music Jamboree in Denmark, and in 2010, with Alberga, he founded the music festival ‘Arcadia’ in north Herefordshire, England.

Tom is privileged to own and play a violin by one of the great Cremonese makers - a splendid 1659 Nicolo Amati.

Tom: “I have played my violin for twenty years. It is a magnificent and consummate work. Fashioned in Cremona in northern Italy, it bears the label of its creator:

Nicolaus Amatus Cremonen. Hieronymi. Fil. ac Antonij Nepos Fecit 1659

Thus it has already had a 350-year life, which renders my few years with it as a mere flirtation.

If I should live to a reasonable age, I could perhaps hope to feature in a quarter of her life; that, of course discounts her unfathomable future. My end is certain; hers is not. Barring a complete a complete mangling or crushing in whatever freak accidents, her life is, in theory infinite. There have been violins carried out to sea in floods, crushed under car wheels; these have continued their lives.

Characteristically narrow waisted and bearing the fine proportions of Nicolo's "Grand Pattern", the back, head and ribs possess a delicate but complex curl. These are not the tiger stripes of some of Stradivari's most illustrious violins but something mellower and gentler.

These traits are in a way matched by the instrument's response and tone. The sound does not reach my ears with that deafening and heart stopping lazer of the 1709 "Viotti" Strad I once borrowed for a few weeks; rather it gently surrounds me with a depth and multi-dimensional quality that is at once rich and beguiling. When I have heard others playing the instrument in a large hall, I have been amazed at the way in which the sound seems to glow. The colours in Italian renaissance painting can do this. I remember staring at a painting of Bellini's in Venice astonished by the blue of the Madonna's dress. Defying the two dimensions in which it was captured, the whole thing glowed and seemed to float with a radiant luminescence. So it is with this sound. It vaporizes around the violin, casting a halo of sound. 

This is alchemy indeed! The great and mysterious triumph of medieval and renaissance technology. Knowledge that is at once artistic and scientific.”

If you have any questions regarding Tom's Amati, please contact him here