Mark Doffman

Mark Doffman

After messing around and annoying everyone on his brother’s drumkit , Mark got into playing more seriously whilst at university. During a four year degree course in South Asian Languages at the Unversity of London (for a small fee, Mark is happy to converse with you in Sinhalese) Mark took lessons on snare drum from Nigel Shipway and then studied for a couple of years with Kenny Clare, one of the finest jazz drummers of his generation. At this point , Mark worked with the mildly subversive Family Fodder on whose albums he is featured.

After college Mark began to get gigs around London with other developing players; at this time, Trinity College of Music had a big band but no in house drummer and so Mark spent 18 months playing with this fine college band, leading to the offer of a place on the degree course at Trinity.

Mark continued to play though the 80’s in many weird and wonderful musical situations – jazz gigs, covers bands, theatre work including gigs with many of the players who now visit The Spin. Other interesting oddities include touring/gigs with Pyewacket (folk rock legends), Metalworks gamelan (gamelan legends), Harvey Brough and Emma Freud (general legends).

Mark’s current work beyond The Spin includes a concert schedule with Willard White, one of the great opera basses whose current band features Guy Barker and Geoff Gascoyne; Sally Burgess, mezzo soprano whose great voice can be heard at ENO, the Metropolitan Opera House, New York and Bayreuth. Mark is currently the drummer with the excellent Big Colors Big Band which performs regularly in Oxford and beyond, and completes his performance schedule with all sorts of jazz gigs and other freelance work in the South East.

Beyond playing, Mark works as a researcher in music performance. He completed an MA in Music Psychology at Sheffield in 2005 before being offered an AHRC bursary to study for his doctorate in the Music Dept of the Open University. On completion of his PhD, Mark joined the Sociology Dept at The Open University where he worked  on a research project looking at the work and lives of black British jazz musicians. Since May 2011, Mark has been working in the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford as a Research Fellow working on a project with Eric Clarke examining creative practice in contemporary concert music.