Ulysses Owens Jr.
drums
Three-time Grammy Award-winning drummer, producer, and educator Ulysses Owens Jr. is “a musician who balances excitement gracefully and shines with innovation”(The New York Times). In 2022, the Ulysses Owens Jr. Big Band was voted “Rising Star Big Band” by DownBeat. Owens has released eight albums including Songs of Freedom, which was picked as a Top Ten Album by both Jazziz and Rolling Stone in 2019 and 2021, Soul Conversations, which was voted the top album in May 2021 by Jazziz, and his latest album, A New Beat, featuring Generation Y (January 2024). Owens has also performed on Grammy Award-winning albums by Kurt Elling and the Christian McBride Big Band, as well as five Grammy Award-nominated albums with Joey Alexander, Christian McBride Trio, Monk’estra, and Gregory Porter. Owens currently serves on the jazz faculty at The Juilliard School, where he received his B.F.A. and was the first African-American jazz drummer to be admitted to their inaugural Jazz Studies program in 2001. He is currently slated to pursue his master’s degree in Jazz Performance and Arts Administration at Florida State University in fall 2024. He is also the artistic director for “Don’t Miss A Beat,” his family’s arts non-profit organization in Jacksonville, Florida, and has a three-year appointment as an artist-in-residence at San Francisco Performances. Owens has published three books: Jazz Brushes for the Modern Drummer: An Essential Guide to the Art of Keeping Time, The Musicians Career Guide: Turning Your Talent into Sustained Success, and Jazz Big Band for the Modern Drummer: The Essential Guide to the Large Ensemble. He was also recently asked to join Drumeo, an online educational platform, as their inaugural jazz drum instructor and is developing the curriculum for his interactive course, “30 Days to Becoming a Jazz Drummer,” which will launch in June 2024.