Mark Armstrong

Mark is a trumpeter, composer, arranger and teacher of considerable note on the UK scene. Jazz Professor at the Royal College of Music and Musical Director of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, he also teaches composition and arranging at the London Centre of Contemporary Music and is a music examiner for the ABRSM. When he isn’t teaching, Mark plays regularly with the Ronnie Scott's Jazz Orchestra, and is an alumni of Clark Tracey's Quintet. Winner of the BBC Big Band Competition arranging prize, he is particularly fond of the music most famously associated with Duke Ellington. However, Mark is equally as likely to be found in a concert hall performing classical symphonies with groups including the London Sinfonietta and this cosmopolitan taste echoes through his 2010 recording, “Coastbound”, material from which will be featured tonight. Acknowledging both the straight-ahead bop legacy of American swing and the classically-influenced composition style of jazz’s European counterparts Mark has put together a sparkling, consummately listenable set of primarily original tunes with some classic standards thrown in. Not surprisingly his quintet consists of some of the finest jazz musicians around, Simon Allen (saxophone), Tom Cawley (piano), Andy Cleyndert (bass) and Clark Tracey (drums), a prestigious line-up that will undoubtedly add their own measure of creativity and musical sophistication to the night. “…pirouetting through Gillespie’s breaks quicker than a hummingbird’s wings” Times; “Armstrong…the solo star of the outfit” Guardian