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Tom Owen was born in Sussex in 1980. He began his studies as a scholar at the Purcell School of Music studying with Melanie Ragge, after which he went on to the Royal Academy of Music where he studied with Tess Miller. At the age of 19 he won the Royal Academy of Music Oboe Prize and later received the Musicians Benevolent Fund’s “Professor Charles Leggett Award” and a “Sidney Perry Award” from the Martin Musical Scholarship Fund resulting in an Oboe and Piano recital in London’s Royal Festival Hall. Tom then spent four years at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hannover, with Prof. Klaus Becker, where he received a first class Deutschediplom and a place in the college's prestigious Solo Class. Tom was fortunate to receive additional financial support from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust and the Hattori Foundation during his study period. While studying in Hannover he was on trial for the Principal Oboe positions with both the Northern Sinfonia and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

During his final year of study in Hannover, Tom was appointed Principal Oboist of the Gürzenich Orchestra, Cologne, resident in the Cologne Opera House and the Cologne Philharmonie. In addition to his work in Cologne, Tom appears regularly as Guest Principal Oboist with many of Europes’s leading Symphony Orchestras including the Stattskapelle Dresden, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the North, West and Southwest German Radio Orchestras and both of the Radio Orchestras in Berlin. Additionally he works with the Chamber Orchestras Spira Mirabilis in Italy, the Musikkollegium Wintherthur in Switzerland, Britten Sinfonia and the Camerata Salzburg.

Tom has performed in America, Europe and Asia both as a soloist and chamber musician. He featured as a soloist in Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival with violinist Nigel Kennedy in performances of Bach’s Double Concerto. Other highlights include multiple performances of the Strauss Concerto and Mozart Sinfonia Concertante with Gürzenich-Orchestra in the Cologne Philharmonie under Markus Stenz, the Fischer Oboe Concerto in the Cologne Philharmonie with the Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic under Reinhard Goebel and the 2nd Brandenburg Concerto with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra under Christian Ludwig. He also toured Spain playing Marcello and Pasculli Concertos with the Gürzenich Chamber Orchestra and played Haydns Sinfonia Concertante with the West German Sinfonia under Dirk Joeres. A busy Chamber Musician, Tom has performed with the German Linos and Calamus ensembles (including recording for the MDG label) in addition to working with his own ensemble: Cologne Chamber Soloists. Tom is also a founder of the Cologne Chamber Music Series “Kammermusik für Köln” now in its second season.

He has a busy private teaching schedule in Cologne and has given master classes in the Beijing Conservatory, the Royal Northern College of Music and the NRW Orchesterzentrum in Dortmund.