Diana Owen - Rehearsal Accompanist



Diana Owen was born in Farnham where her father, Harold Beeken, taught English at the Grammar School.  She was a Junior Exhibitioner, an Associated Board Gold Medallist and Scholar at the Royal College of Music where she studied piano with Eric Harrison and Kendall Taylor, harpsichord with Millicent Silver, accompaniment skills with Hubert Dawkes and composition with Herbert Howells.  

Her setting of Psalm 150, composed for the first Farnham Festival in 1961, was published by Novello and her new setting of the same psalm for mixed choir, two trumpets and organ was performed on 50th anniversary of the Festival in 2011.

 She was the resident pianist and piano tutor at the University of Winchester from 1963 until her retirement in May 2017 where she performed regularly both as a soloist and accompanist and she has been the accompanist for the Farnham and Bourne Choral Society since November 2004.  She was the soloist in the Society’s performance of Constant Lambert’s 'Rio Grande’ in 2014 and the acompanist in Rossini's 'Petite Messes Solonnelle' in 2015