News – Chuck Owen

Featured Videos

“Within Us” Celebrating 25 Years of the Jazz Surge – Coming Sept 2021

WDR Big Band, May 2021, recording of “And Your Point Is. . . . ?”

WDR Big Band, July 2019, recording of my arrangement of “This Love of Mine”

WDR Big Band, Nov 2018

WDR Big Band rehearsing my arrangement of “Beautiful Love” (from Madcap CD) before concert performance in Siegen. Featuring John Goldsby on bass, Ludwig Nuss on trombone, and Karolina Strassmayer on alto sax.

Charts & Study Scores from “Madcap” available here.

Aarhus Big Band, Feb 2015

Charts and Study Scores from “Next Step” available here.

Whispers on the Wind
The latest recording from
Chuck Owen & The Jazz Surge.

Nominated for 4
2018 GRAMMY Awards

Charts and Study Scores from “Whispers on the Wind” available here.

Other Cool Stuff!!

2019 Jazz Composers Symposium Right Around the Corner!! Register NOW!

Really hope you will join me at ISJAC’s upcoming Jazz Composers’ Symposium May 16-18, 2019 in Greeley, CO!! Chris Potter, Darcy James Argue, Ron Miles/Bill Frisell, Vince Mendoza, Christine Jensen. . . . . and many, many more! For more info, visit: isjac.org/symposium

This is always an amazing 2 ½ days . . . . don’t miss it!!

Best . . . .Gift . . . . . Ever!!

This incredible sculpture looks quite at home here in the mountains of North Carolina, doesn’t it! I have rarely been as moved or touched as when the members of the Jazz Surge presented me with this piece they had specially commissioned from Penny Hardy, the British artist whose larger than life “Blown Away” sculpture is featured on our “Whispers On the Wind” CD cover. Wow . . . . . words still elude me . . . . . . . .!!

USF Student Jazz Composer Awards

Two of my USF student composers have received national/international recognition and awards for their work within the last year. Most recently, Simon Lasky (current MM student in Jazz Composition) was the winner of the British Composer Award for Best Small Group Jazz Composition for his work “Close to Ecstasy”. The ceremony was in London with coverage and an interview with Simon by the BBC (amongst others). Matt Horanzy’s (MM in Jazz Comp, 2018) composition “Init 1” was the national winner of both the National Band Association’s Jazz Composition Contest as well as ASMAC’s (the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers) Bill Conti Big Band Competition. As a result of the NBA award, the work was performed by the famed Airmen of Note in December at the Midwest Band Clinic in Chicago. Matt has been accepted to participate in the BMI Jazz Composers’ Workshop in Fall of 2019.

Both were selected to present at the upcoming Jazz Composers’ Symposium. Big congrats!!