Academy Big Band with Mark Lockheart

ACADEMY BIG BAND

Flute/Piccolo
Sam Norris

Alto Saxophone
Lewis Sallows
Donovan Haffner

Tenor Saxophone
Matthew Berrill
Matt Cook

Baritone Saxophone
Nick Willsher

Trumpet
Ewan Parkin
Brinley Heywood-Snell
Alex Ridout
Steven Nichols

Trombone
Harry Maund
Harvey Tongs
Max McLeish

Bass Trombone
Harry Whitty

Vocals
Imogen Churchill

Guitar
Miles Mindlin
Karim Saber

Piano
Noah Stoneman
Reuben Goldmark

Drums
Jack Thomas
Kai Craig

Bass
John Jones

Saxophonist and composer Mark Lockheart came to prominence in the mid-1980s with the influential big band Loose Tubes. In 1992, he formed the eclectic co-led quartet Perfect Houseplants, a group that released six albums and collaborated with classical artists including the Orlando Consort, Andrew Manze and Pamela Thorby.

The mid-90s saw Mark recording and performing with many jazz, folk and pop artists, including Django Bates, Kenny Wheeler, Norma Winstone, June Tabor, Stereolab, Jah Wobble, Robert Wyatt, Prefab Sprout, Dom Um Romão, Thomas Dolby and Radiohead.

In 2003, Mark joined Seb Rochford’s Polar Bear, which recorded six groundbreaking albums. Its second album, Held on the Tips of Fingers, was nominated for the 2005 Mercury Award and later appeared in Jazzwise's 100 Albums That Shook the World. Its fifth album, In Each and Every One, was also nominated for a Mercury Award in 2013.

In 2007, Mark was a soloist in Mark-Anthony Turnage's About Water. He collaborated several times more with Turnage, performing his A Man Descending with the Southbank Sinfonia in 2008 and as one of the musicians in the opera Anna Nicole, which premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2011.

Mark's quintet album In Deep was released to critical acclaim in 2009. The following year saw the release of his first big band album Days Like These with the Hamburg-based NDR Bigband. He was awarded the Parliamentary Jazz Awards Jazz Musician of the Year in 2010.

In 2013, he released Ellington in Anticipation, a radical reworking of Ellington melodies. The album was MOJO Magazine’s Jazz Album of 2013 and was nominated in the Jazz Album of the Year category at the 2014 Parliamentary Jazz Awards.

An invitation to perform at the New York Rochester Jazz Festival in 2014 led to the formation of Mark's trio, Malija, with bassist Jasper Høiby and pianist Liam Noble. Malija's debut album, The Day I Had Everything, was released in 2015 to critical acclaim. The second album, Instinct, was released in 2017, followed by a 21-date tour.

In 2016 he was awarded Jazz FM Instrumentalist of the Year and was nominated for a British Composer Award for his composition With One Voice. A few years later saw the birth of two very contrasting projects, the jazz/orchestral work Days on Earth for jazz sextet and 30-piece orchestra, released on Edition Records in 2019, and a set of English Renaissance music, Salvator Mundi, recorded at Temple Church in London with organist Roger Sayer.

His latest recording, Dreamers, with his new group (of the same name), will be released on the Edition label in early 2022.