Gwilym Bowen is a 20-year old Hereford-born jazz pianist with a wide range of experience and a diverse musical background. He started playing jazz while a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral, with early and continuing influence from pianists McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Brad Mehldau. His compositions reflect interests beyond jazz, from classical music into modern electro and rock. Gwilym has led groups ranging from small combinations to big bands, along with solo playing, and his quartet performing at the festival is a new group in collaboration with bass player Beni Giles, which will play original compositions alongside more familiar music, if in an unfamiliar guise. He has recently started studies with Tom Cawley of Acoustic Ladyland and Curios.

Gwilym has performed and collaborated with, among others, Israeli drummer Asaf Sirkis, and the late Humphrey Lyttelton, with whom he recorded for ITV's The South Bank Show in 2007, and has played at various venues in the UK and in America, where he spent a year in between school and university. He is currently a choral scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he is studying music.