Timothy Rowe, 53, orchestra founder

Timothy Rowe, a classical musician, orchestra founder and music lecturer who grew up in Ridgefield, died last week in northern Virginia, where he had lived for many years.

Mr. Rowe’s body was found on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2005, in the woods near a dirt road in Shenandoah County, Virginia, according to The Washington Post. The death is being investigated by the Shenandoah County Sheriff Timothy C. Carter, according to The Post, and preliminary autopsy results indicate Mr. Rowe died of a self-inflicted stab wound. “We have no reason to believe there was any foul play,” the Post quotes Sheriff Carter as saying.

The sheriff’s office offered no further news of the investigation on Wednesday.

Mr. Rowe, 53, grew up on High Ridge Road in Ridgefield. He was a son of the late Dr. Robert Rowe, longtime music teacher in town and director of music for the Ridgefield Public Schools for many years, and the late Page Rowe, a former children’s librarian at the New Canaan Library and longtime volunteer at the Ridgefield Thrift Shop.

One of five children in a very musical family, Mr. Rowe graduated from Ridgefield High School in 1969 and earned degrees in music from Middlebury College in Vermont and also the University of Wisconsin, where he studied under Robert Fountain.

He was the founder and music director of the Amadeus Orchestra, founded in 1983 in Great Falls, Va., and was founder and artistic director of the Potomac Theater Orchestra started in 1996. He made his conducting debut in Carnegie Hall in 1991.

Mr. Rowe started the Amadeus Concerts series, presenting classical music at sites throughout northern Virginia for the last 24 years. He was an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University, and senior lecturer in music for the Smithsonian Institution. He designed the certificate studies program in music history for the Smithsonian Associates and was a guest lecturer for organizations such as a The Washington Opera and the Baltimore Symphony.

He led several trips to the Danube countries of central Europe for the Smithsonian and the Trust for Historic Preservation, and was a panel member of the USIA Cultural Ambassadors program.

Mr. Rowe chose Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony for a free concert given by the Amadeus Orchestra on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11th attack on the Pentagon, which had taken the lives of six people from Great Falls, Va.

At the time he spoke of choosing for the occasion a symphony written after Beethoven came to accept his loss of hearing.

“He thought his composing life was over in 1802. He had to change his way of living, He did, and he was reaping the joy of life in a way: every note is an affirmation of hope,” Mr. Rowe said.

“In the Seventh, he had come to grips with his loss of hearing and emerged in triumph. Even the slow movement is a contemplation and not a tragedy.”

A memorial service for Mr. Rowe is planned Saturday, March 5, at 4 p.m. at St. Francis Episcopal Church, 9220 Georgetown Pike, Great Falls, VA, 22066.

Timothy Rowe is survived by four siblings: Judith R. Michaels of Hopewell, N.J., Randolph B. Rowe of South Egremont, Mass., Christopher G. Rowe of Concord, Mass., and Ellen H. Rowe of Storrs.