Mark Simpson is 22 years old and from Liverpool. In 2006 he became the first ever winner of both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and BBC Proms/Guardian Young Composer of the Year competitions.
Mark Simpson is 22 years old and from Liverpool. In 2006 he became the first ever winner of both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and BBC Proms/Guardian Young Composer of the Year competitions.
He made his Wigmore Hall debut at the age of 17 and has performed as soloist with many of the country's leading conductors and orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Vassily Petrenko, the Northern Sinfonia with Yan Pascal Tortellier, the BBC Philharmonic with Gianandrea Noseda, as well as the City of London Sinfonia, the Manning Camerata and the BBC Concert Orchestra with Carl Davis. He has also appeared with Oxford Philomusica and Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestras performing Magnus Lindberg's Clarinet Concerto. In 2008 he appeared as concerto soloist in the BBC Last Night of the Proms in the Park, in Hyde Park. He has toured the Middle East and has performed in Denver, Colorado as the Lakewood Music Scholar, the Mecklenburg Vopommern and in Bonn's Beethovenfest.
Mark is deeply committed to the performance of new music, particularly for the basset clarinet. He has just released a disc on the NMC label that sees the culmination of five years' work with composers, to develop new works for clarinet and basset clarinet. The composers included are Mark-Anthony Turnage, Gary Carpenter, David Horne, Kenneth Hesketh, Gavin Higgins, Emily Howard, Stephen Pratt and Mark Simpson.
As a composer, Mark has worked with some of the leading orchestras and ensembles in the country, including a long relationship with the RLPO's Ensemble 10:10. Threads for Orchestra was commissioned by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and performed by Vasily Petrenko in the Sage Gateshead, the London Barbican and in Birmingham's Symphony Hall. Nur Musik, a work for oboe and chamber ensemble was premiered in Liverpool by Jonathan Small, principal oboe with the RLPO, and Ensemble 10:10 conducted by Clark Rundell. A Mirror-Fragment..., a 12 minute orchestral tone-poem based on the poetry of Melanie Challenger was premiered by the RLPO and Paul Daniel in October 2008. Ariel, written for the Mercury Quartet, was premiered in November 2009. Barkham Fantasy was written for pianist Richard Uttley and premiered in the Royal Festival Hall in May 2010. Los Proverbios for the Aronowitz Ensemble was premiered in the Two Moors Festival in September 2010.
Mark's second commission from Ensemble 10:10, a 10 minute Septet, was reviewed in The Times: "... two tautly worked movements ... locked together with the kind of musicality, panache and avoidance of stunts only possible with genuine, 100 per cent talent". The Septet was later played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's new music ensemble, Music NOW. He has also had works performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and contemporary music ensemble Psappha. Mark is also a member of the Philharmonia Orchestra's Young Composers' Academy.
In 2008 he spent six months in Berlin where he studied briefly with Unsuk Chin. He attended the Dartington International Summer School in 2010 with Julian Anderson. He is currently reading music at St.Catherine's College Oxford and is principal conductor of the Oxford University Sinfonietta.
Mark has played Peter Eaton International model clarinets since April 2004. We have also made a basset clarinet for him, in conjunction with that wonderful craftsman Tony Ward, for performances of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and for the new works that Mark has commissioned for basset clarinet.
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