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 (look it up on the web if you don’t believe us) on whose rather strange albums he is featured. Family Fodder were of course formed out of the short lived and highly uninfluential “The Ideologically Pure Nude”.

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. Unfortunately, he had no money to pay the fees so with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, had to forego this particular pleasure.

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), Denise Black and The London Band (ex Coronation Street legend).

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; the Angus Murray Big Band; numerous jazz gigs around London and the south east, and all sorts of this-and-that type freelance work.

Beyond playing, Mark does some teaching at Oxford Brookes University and is also engaged in doctoral research within an AHRC funded research project at The Open University looking at notions of experience and meaning in music performance. Answers on a postcard please.