August Guan

Dr August Guan is an early keyboardist, organist, and musicologist based in Cheltenham. He holds a PhD in Music from Cardiff University, where his research focused on eighteenth-century English keyboard arrangements. These were examined not only as artefacts of musical adaptation, but as a critical site for interrogating modern-day assumptions about genre, authenticity, and the work-concept. His study also included detailed analyses of keyboard overtures and articulation practices within the English keyboard school, and was supported by a doctoral recital and concert series in Cardiff. His academic mentors included Peter Allsop, David Ponsford, and David Wyn Jones.

After early training in conducting at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing—where he co-founded Mainland China's first academic early music institute—he made his debut with Nigel Kennedy and the China Philharmonic Orchestra. He later moved to the UK, performing at major festivals and collaborating with ensembles such as Welsh Camerata and Sinfonia Cymru. In the 2010s, he co-founded the Tomkins Consort, which held a regular concert series at the Welsh National Museum in Cardiff.

He has appeared as a recitalist on original historical instruments at venues including the Welsh National Museum in Cardiff between 2015 and 2017, and the Horniman Museum in London in 2019. His repertoire centres on keyboard intabulation and arrangement from the sixteenth to early nineteenth century, alongside original works from the English and French schools, from the Mulliner Book to Jacques-Marie Beauvarlet-Charpentier. He studied harpsichord and organ with David Ponsford, Andrew Wilson-Dickson, Gary Cooper, and David Hill.

Since 2010, he has also served as a liturgical organist and choirmaster. Upon completing his doctorate in 2023, he was appointed Sub-Organist at Brecon Cathedral, where he reintroduced Gregorian Chant into regular worship. He has continued to integrate Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical repertoire into living liturgical contexts, including the curatorial use of the 1690s anonymous consort organ at St George's, Nottingham (2022–24), and his current post as 'titulaire' organist at St Gregory's Catholic Church, Cheltenham, since late 2024. There, he gives bi-monthly Organ Concerts of Ancient Music, warmly followed by the local community.