In demand throughout North America as a performer and teacher on historical oboes, Margaret Owens 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. She is a founding member of the chamber music group Kleine Kammermusik, whose 2017 album Fanfare and Filigree (Acis) has received critical acclaim. She is a featured soloist on the 2023 release Altissima (Chandos) from baroque trumpeter Josh Cohen. Dr. 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 oboe bands and their role in the entertainments at Louis XIV’s court, and led to further exploration and expertise in the French baroque masquerade. Her oboe teachers were James Prodan, Joseph Robinson, Ronald Roseman, and Randall Cook.

Margaret is an active participant in the musical life of the Washington, DC area where she is a member of numerous period-instrument orchestras. She has seen much of the US in her travels to play with groups spanning from San Francisco to Boston. Her summers are spent onstage at the Charlotte Bach Festival, the Staunton Music Festival, and teaching at the Amherst Early Music Festival. A proud native of Eastern North Carolina, Margaret lives in Fairfax, Virginia with her husband, the music historian Tom C. Owens. Their son, an avid gamer, is at college majoring in computer science.