Jennifer Fowler was born in Bunbury, Western Australia, in 1939. During her student years at the University of Western Australia she won several composition prizes and was awarded the University's Convocation Award for outstanding results. While still a student, she had pieces performed in the Festival of Perth and broadcast by the ABC. In 1968 she spent a year working at the Electronic Music Studios of the University of Utrecht, on a Dutch Government scholarship. Since 1969, she has been living in London where she works as a free-lance composer.
She has won a number of international prizes for composition: in 1970 a prize from the Academy of the Arts in Berlin; in 1971 joint winner of the Radcliffe Award of Great Britain; in 1975, 1st prize in the GEDOK International Competition for Women Composers in Mannheim; in 2003 a Miriam Gideon prize from the International Association of Women in Music. In 2001 her 50 minute song cycle: Eat and Be Eaten, commissioned by the Song Company, Sydney, was honoured by the judges of the 2001 Paul Lowin Awards and given a High Commendation. The Paul Lowin Awards are Australia's most prestigious awards. In 2006 she won a prize in the Christopher Bodman Memorial Composers' Prize for her piece for 4 trombones: "Bone Dance", in May 2009 the Sylvia Glickman Memorial Prize for her string quartet: "Towards Release" and in June 2009, equal 1st prize in the Marin Goleminov International Composition Contest in Bulgaria.
Her output includes orchestral works, chamber pieces, works for voice and instrumental ensemble, solo music and vocal ensembles of various kinds. She has written for top professional players and also for amateurs and children. She is particularly interested in writing for particular performers or in using old or unusual instruments in a new way.
Her music has been included in such prestigious international festivals as the ISCM World Music Days; the Gaudeamus Music Week, Holland; the Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music, UK; the International Sydney Spring Festival; and Women in Music festivals in USA, UK, Italy, Australia and China.
She has had pieces commissioned by such organisations as the BBC; the ABC; the Festival of Perth; the Music Board of the Australia Council; the Radcliffe Award of Great Britain; the Seymour Group, Sydney; the New London Children's Choir, UK; the Song Company, Sydney; Donne in Musica, Italy; and Women in Music (UK).
Articles about Fowler can be found in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Macmillan, 1980), and also in the latest edition of 2001; the Pandora Guide to Women Composers (Pandora, 1994); The New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers (Macmillan, 1994). Articles by Fowler about her music can be found in: The Contemporary Music Review, Vol 11 (Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995); and Journal of the International Alliance of Women in Music, Vol 12, No 1 (Oceanna Music Publications, 2006).
Recent performances include: Plainsong for Strings in Beijing, April 08; and Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in Melbourne, May 08; Piece for an Opera House, Sydney, May 08; Streaming Up for 4 wind and Echoes from an Antique Land for 4 bassoons & piano in Angouleme, France, June 08; Blow Flute, Rome, Feb 2009, Towards Release, Sofia, February 2009, Piece for an Opera House, Sydney, June 2009, Blow Flute, Adelaide, December 2009, Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis, New College Oxford, June 2010, Lament for Dunblane, Melbourne, August 2010. Cycling for piano has been selected by the Conservatoire in Calabria, Italy for inclusion in a CD project of piano music for children.