A committed, passionate, and nationally respected jazz educator for over 35 years; Chuck Owen is recognized equally and throughout the jazz industry for his unique compositional voice.  Thoughtful, creative, evocative, and intensely personal . . . . his compositions and arrangements are steeped in the jazz tradition but draw liberally and often playfully from a diverse array of additional influences that include contemporary classical, American folk/roots music, Latin, funk, hip-hop. . . even country!

Since founding it in 1995, Owen’s primary creative outlet has been the 19-piece Jazz Surge.  Owen has served as conductor, primary composer/arranger, and producer of all of its six highly-feted CDs – the last 3 of which have garnered GRAMMY nominations!

Born in Norfolk, VA, Owen spent his elementary school days in Omaha, NE before his family moved to Cincinnati (which remains home for his brother and much of his mother’s extended family).  Following a year at the College of Wooster (OH), Owen matriculated to the University of North Texas where he received a BM in Music Education (trombone concentration).   There, a host of mentors and friends, along with a dozen jazz “lab” bands all hungry for new music, proved the perfect incubator for a budding composer/arranger.  He went on to earn his Master’s degree in Orchestral Conducting (!) at California State University, Northridge before spending another couple of years in Los Angeles free-lancing and apprenticing with film/TV composer, Patrick Williams, via a National Endowment for the Arts Study Grant.

In 1981, Owen moved (along with his wife and 3-month old daughter, Nicole) to Tampa to accept the first dedicated faculty post in Jazz Studies at the University of South Florida.  With the enviable and exhilarating opportunity to build a program from scratch – designing virtually every facet of the curriculum and degree programs – Owen immersed himself in teaching.  USF Jazz Studies Program quickly became acknowledged as one of the nation’s best.  Now accorded with the honorific title/rank of, “Distinguished University Professor”, Owen has been recognized by USF with its Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, President’s Award for Faculty Excellence, and most recently, the Outstanding Research Award.

In 2004, a long held vision, the USF Center for Jazz Composition, was birthed . . . . with Owen as its Director.  Espousing a mission that sought to illuminate the role of the composer in jazz as well as to assist in its continuing development, the CJC launched several prominent programs:  the Jazz Composers’ Symposium, the International Jazz Arranging Competition, the Jazz Masterworks Series, & the Michael Brecker Tribute Project – leading to the publication of the Center’s first CD with Owen as producer/arranger/conductor.  Along the way, several works were commissioned, others transcribed, and dozens premiered.  Sadly, funding for the Center was a casualty of the 2008 recession and was forced to close its doors in 2014.

In 2015, Chuck met with two former students, Dr. Dave Stamps & Dr. Brian Coyle, and began discussions/planning that led to the formation of the International Society of Jazz Arrangers & Composers.  Although still in its infancy, that Society has already been received enthusiastically by a world-wide array of composers who flocked to the first ISJAC-sponsored Jazz Composers’ Symposium in May of 2017 which Owen produced.  He currently serves as President of ISJAC.

Owen’s prominent professional service has included a term as President of theInternational Association for Jazz Education, as “governor” for the Florida Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, and as a grants panelist/chair for the Pulitzer Prize in Music, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Grammy Awards, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, and numerous others.  He is the author of several articles on jazz composition and for years routinely reviewed new music for the Jazz Educators Journal.