BAGATELLE

At the age of 8 Alan Owen and his family left their native Wales for Zimbabwe (Rhodesia at the time) where he received a general education and later, a musical one at the Rhodesian College of Music and as a member of the R&B band 'The Plebs'. He returned to the UK in 1966 to study piano and composition in London and for two years was a student of composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger who described Owen as "Gifted and inspired". He taught piano at the Royal Academy of Music Junior School for fifteen years and at the Working Mens' College in London while exploring the production and performance of fusions of classical, free jazz and electronic improvisation as leader of the group Erato. Owen returned to Wales in 1990 where he combines teaching with composition and recording. "The key to understanding Albert Alan Owen and his music can be found in how he describes himself 'I am a composer and recording artist'."

With a copyright date of 1962, 'Bagatelle' must have been composed while Owen was still at school in present day Zimbabwe, and probably a decade before he ventured into electronic music and fusion. It is an attractive looking and energetic piece in one movement, clearly structured with a more lyrical central section and a coda which reprises the opening few bars before ending in cheerfully jocular style. It seems to bear out Nadia Boulanger's later comment on Alan Owen's composing talent as he can have been no more than 14 when he wrote it.

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