Faculty

Profile

Legendary Jazz artist JIMMY OWENS (trumpet, flugelhorn) has over forty-five years of experience as a Jazz trumpeter, composer, arranger, lecturer, and music education consultant. His experience covers a wide range of international musical achievement, which includes extensive work as a studio musician, soloist, bandleader, and composer of orchestral compositions, movie scores, and ballets. 

Jimmy is one of the few trumpeters of his generation who played as a sideman with such extraordinary Jazz leaders as Lionel Hampton, Hank Crawford, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Duke Ellington, Billy Taylor, and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Band, among others. As a result, his musical and personal recollections are unique. He can share personal recollections of being a sideman in some of the most exciting bands in the history of Jazz music. His anecdotes are priceless: playing with Cootie Williams, Sweets Edison, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie in an historic concert at Yale where Eubie Blake and Paul Robeson were in the audience; sitting in with Miles Davis at the age of fifteen, and many others.

Throughout his long career, Jimmy has consistently emphasized in both his performances and recordings a deep understanding of the blues as well as beautiful and articulate emotional projection on ballads. As a reviewer stated in All About Jazz regarding Jimmy’s performance on One More: The Summary – Music of Thad Jones, Vol 2 (2006), an all-star recording on which Jimmy appeared – “Jimmy Owens … proves that he’s better than ever, whether employing a breathy, vocal quality (Little Pixie), a smooth flugelhorn sound (Three in One), or brilliant and elliptical Jones-like melodic ideas (Rejoice).” 

Awards And Honors

National Endowment for the Arts JAZZ MASTER (class of 2012)