At 16 Mark Glentworth was one of the youngest students to study percussion at the Royal Northern College Of Music. After graduating he started working in London as a Freelance percussionist in all styles of music including regular work with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta. He became the last Solo Percussionist with Sir Peter Maxwell Davis’s contemporary ensemble The Fires Of London.
His composition work has covered a very wide spectrum of music ranging from commercial song writing through to orchestral composition and has included most styles and mediums in-between. One of his first compositions was a vibraphone solo called “ Blues For Gilbert”, which has gone on to become a percussion standard finding its way on to many percussion C.D’s and is performed by soloists such as Evelyn Glennie.
In 1981 he started working with the Actor/Director Steven Berkoff as composer /performer, and has since collaborated on many of his Stage, T.V. and Radio productions, including West, Greek, Metamorphosis, Sink The Belgrano, The Trial, Coriolanus, Macbeth (Radio version), One Man Show, Telltale Heart , Berkoff’s Messiah ( scenes from a crucifixion) and most recently a production of Richard II at the Ludlow Festival, for which the music received special praise.
Mark is very familiar working within a studio environment, both with bands and as a freelance session musician. As a composer he is very familiar with synchronization using time code and other techniques, as well as being able to adapt music at very short notice and meet deadlines.
Recently his profile as a classical composer has also been gaining momentum with particular interest in the Marimba Concerto No1. ( to be premiered By international soloist Pedro Carneiro) and a short opera based on Oscar Wilde’s “The Nightingale And The Rose”