Jane Meredith Bowers

Jane Meredith Bowers (September 17, 1936 – June 28, 2022) was an American flautist, musicologist, educator and feminist. She is most known for editing Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950 and for her contributions to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Early life and education Bowers was born on September 17, 1936, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. As a child, Bowers began learning piano aged 4 and played the piano and flute during her elementary, middle school, and high school education.

Bowers studied Bachelor of Music at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts (1958), a Master of Music History at the University of California, Berkeley (1962), and a Doctor of Philosophy in Music History at the University of California, Berkeley (1971).

Career From 1962 to 1965, Bowers was the assistant principal flutist with the Oakland Symphony in Oakland, California. In 1989, she gave a talk on "Feminist Scholarship and the Field of Musicology" at the College Music Symposium.

Bowers was the author of The French Flute School from 1700 to 1760 (1981), based on her PhD thesis. She translated French composer François Devienne’s flute treatise from the original French text in 1999.

Bowers researched European women composers with the benefit of a post-doctoral fellowship from the American Association of University Women. a "pathbreaking anthology of authoritative essays on historical women musicians."

Bowers researched the life of African-American blues singer Estelle Yancey and her husband Jimmy Yancey and wrote articles about them for the journal Black Music Research.

With director Thallis Hoyt Drake, Bowers was a founding board member in 1986 of Early Music Now in Milwaukee.

Personal life and death Bowers identified as a lesbian. She came out at her 70th birthday party.

Bowers died of natural causes on June 28, 2022, at Silverado North Shore Memory Care Community in Glendale, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, aged 85.