Margaret Owens

In demand throughout North America as a performer and teacher on historical oboes, Margaret Owens is a founding member of the chamber music group Kleine Kammermusik, whose 2017 album Fanfare and Filigree (Acis) has received critical acclaim. She is on faculty in the historical performance institutes of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University; at both institutions, her work centers around broadening the study of historical oboes, from playing the instruments to exploring the performance practices specific to the 18th century.  Ms. Owens earned degrees in oboe performance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the Manhattan School of Music, and the City University of New York, where her doctoral work focused on the oboe bands and their role in the entertainments at Louis XIV’s court, and led to further exploration and expertise in the French baroque theatrical forms.

An eastern North Carolina native, living with her music historian husband and computer enthusiast son in Northern Virginia, Ms. Owens is an active participant in the musical life of the Washington, DC area, working with the area’s period instrument orchestras. She has seen much of the United States in her travels to play with groups spanning from San Francisco to Boston. Summers see her onstage at the Charlotte Bach Festival, the Staunton Music Festival, and teaching at early music workshops such as the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and Amherst Early Music Festival.