Craig Owens

In 1982 he moved to Antigua where he played jazz, calypso and reggae. Moved to Montserrat as a Baha'i pioneer with his wife, Elizabeth and son Jeremy, having played guitar since he was 19, in Kansas and Colorado Springs.

In 1984 he returned to the U.S. and began teaching jazz guitar and improvisation at Wichita State University. In 1989 the Bodo Ensemble was formed with Glenn Holmes and Randy Bowen and concentrating on free improvisation. With the addition of Andrew Bishop(tenor/soprano saxophones) and Michael Unruh(bass clarinet) he began to focus on composition, the first examples being on the suite entitled The Seven Martyrs of Tehran. In the following decades the Bodo Ensemble continued to record and serve as a creative outlet for a changing cast of WSU students and faculty and local professionals. Alumni of the Bodo Ensemble are now active in New York, Detroit, Boston, Los Angeles and elsewhere. The music of the Bodo Ensemble brings together modern techniques of composition, percussion and rhythms from around the world and improvisational techniques from the post-bop tradition of jazz.