He was a gold medallist at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where his professor was Alexander Kelly.
He was also a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore with Julio Esteban.
Plowright won the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Award in 1984 and the European Piano Competition in 1989.
He champions neglected music from Polish Romantic composers, including Zygmunt Stojowski, Ignacy Jan Paderewski Juliusz Zarębski, Władysław Żeleński, Ludomir Różycki, Ignaz Friedman and Henryk Melcer-Szczawiński, which he has recorded for Hyperion Records and Warner Classics.
He gave the world premiere performance of Constant Lambert's Piano Concerto, and made world premiere recordings of the transcriptions of JS Bach by Walter Morse Rummel, the 'Bach Book for Harriet', the collaborative suite Homage to Paderewski and the "Symphonic Rhapsody" by Stojowski.