Ephraim Owens is a musician, composer, and jazz bandleader who plays trumpet and flugelhorn. He was born on November 5, 1972, in Dallas, Texas. His mother, Mary Alice Lee, loved to sing and his father, John Henry Owens, was an aviation mechanic and avid fan of blues music. Owens took up cornet in the third grade to be in the school band, and he was soon playing trumpet at the family’s Pentecostal church. Through both elementary & middle school, he studied & played classical music.
As Owens demonstrated great promise in middle school, his father proposed that he audition for acceptance to the prestigious Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts known for producing a host of professional musicians. He obliged his father and was accepted. There, he met fellow students like Fred Sanders, Keith Anderson, Keith Loftis, Whitney Russell and Roy Hargrove. Focused on classical when he enrolled, Owens says that when he heard then-senior Roy Hargrove play jazz on trumpet, “That was it,” and he has credited Hargrove as the one person most influential in his pivotal move to jazz and career decision to play jazz professionally.
Following high school graduation, Owens attended Weatherford Community College to study trumpet for two years, at which time he began to play gigs in the Dallas and Fort Worth area. It was at this time that he was recruited to continue his studies through the renowned jazz program at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, now Texas State. There, Owens had course work with renowned trumpet instructor, Dr. Keith Winking, and pianist, composer, and arranger, Dr. James Polk. In 1994 he traveled with the University jazz band for concerts at the North Sea and Montreux Jazz Festivals. During this time, he frequently traveled to Austin for gigs, becoming known as a sensational new talent.
In his pursuit to become a professional trumpeter and career jazz musician on a full-time basis, Owens quit college and moved to Austin in 1996. Around that time, he began performing and honing his licks with Martin Banks, a legendary trumpet performer, instructor, and Austin Jazz Society Hall of Fame recipient. Owens and Banks played in the Texas Trumpets, along with Pat Patterson and Donald Jennings, Owens being the junior member of the group. They were supported in the back line by bass, drums, guitar, and a Hammond B3 organ. Big group, big sound.
Since then, Owens has performed and toured with various jazz, gospel, blues, funk, Latin and cover groups including The Texas Eastside Kings, Blaze, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Jimmy Vaughan, Sheryl Crow, Mumford & Sons, Edith Funker with Erykah Badu, and Patty Griffin. Additionally, he has recorded with Jimmy Vaughan, Sheryl Crow, and Christopher Cross, having won Grammys with Mumford & Sons and Tedeschi Trucks. Owens has performed at virtually every club in Austin and has toured and recorded with a variety of artists across a range of genres, performing around the world including England, Canada, Switzerland, New York, Spain, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. One of Owens’ significant compositions, of which he is particularly proud, was The Night of the Cookers, performed by the Ephraim Owens Quintet as a tribute to Lee Morgan and filmed at The Clay Pit in 2002.
In 2015, Owens joined the blues-rock juggernaut Tedeschi Trucks Band, which has “kept him living out of suitcases since.” He appears on the band’s albums, Life from the Fox Oakland, Signs, and I am the Moon as well as the Tedeschi Trucks Live albums, having written a considerable number of the horn lines. He returned to Austin on March 9, 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down music performances.
Owens recorded with Sherly Crow on the 100 Miles from Memphis album in 2010. In a 2016 interview, he named Sheryl Crow, Mumford & Sons, and Patty Griffin as artists with whom he particularly enjoyed collaborating.
More recently, in February 2025, Owens returned to his childhood roots of playing classical music and performed in American Splendor with the Austin Symphony Orchestra. Sam Lipman, accomplished pianist, composer, and arranger produced a piece specifically for him, entitled, Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra.
For his personal artistic expression, Owens prefers jazz because “jazz covers all of the bases of music….Jazz has freedom of structure….There’s free rein of thought and more conflict than in any other kind of music.” He regularly performs jazz during stints at home in Austin between tour dates and is one of Austin’s most highly regarded practitioners of the art form. His composition MoMoCi is a staple of his live performances in Austin.
Owens is the recipient of eight Austin Music Awards, which are conferred based on votes of readers of the Austin Chronicle. Owens was voted best Horn Player in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017. He was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2017 and received the award for Best Performing Band (Jazz) in 2018 and 2020. Additionally, he received the A.D. Mannion Award conferred by St. James’ Episcopal Church in 2009 for his contribution to jazz in Austin.
Over the years, Ephraim Owens’ talent, skill, and versatility have been on display for all to see and hear, and his range of styles has been evident in his contributions to so many varying genres of music including jazz, country-rock, funk, rock, classical, and sacred music. There is pop and articulation of sound that are distinguishing characteristics of his style. One of the jazz artists that he has played with said, “He just plays his instrument beautifully, gracefully, and effortlessly.” Moreover, his warmth and joyous personality make Owens a desired commodity by all musicians that have been around him and heard him play. It’s as if he is considered family by all those who have been fortunate enough to perform with him. He is well loved in the music community and by his many followers, some of whom are younger artists enchanted by his sound.
In recognition of his contributions to jazz in the Austin area and beyond, The Austin Jazz Society is proud to induct Ephraim Owens into the 2025 Hall of Fame.