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Mark Shepherd (Jazz/swing musician)

Mark Shepherd (no middle name) is an English-born musician, composer and lyricist, currently living in Poland. He was born in Yateley, near Aldershot in Hampshire on 24th July 1963, but spent the first four years of his life in Thornaby-on-Tees (now in Cleveland, but at the time in Yorkshire). At the age of 4 he moved with his family to the Midlands, near the town of Solihull. Shortly after this move, he began to have piano lessons. His musical education was supplemented by regular singing at a nearby Baptist church, attended regularly by his parents and sister, and at which his father was for many years the organist. Despite being in frequent trouble in and occasionally out of school, his childhood was unmarked by any significant trauma other than the addition of penalty points to his driving license 3 years before he received it, and the occasional threat of expulsion from school.

Education: Following a brief stay at Kingsley Preparatory School in Dorridge, he followed his sister to Ruckleigh primary school, where his very traditional education overcame his ease of distraction and allowed him, along with his increasing musical skills, to win a half-academic, half-musical scholarship to nearby Solihull School. His piano lessons continued at the school, now under the careful and patient tutelage of Jill Godsall, eventually adding first the trombone then the French horn under John Geddes. Along with normal academic lessons, school sports and his formal music tuition, he also joined the chapel choir (choirmaster Colin G. Edmondson), choral society, madrigal group, brass ensemble, wind ensemble, first and second orchestras and the operatic society (performing almost exclusively Gilbert & Sullivan operettas under the headmaster, Giles Slaughter). Despite being immersed in music for much of the time, he left Solihull School in 1980 to retake his A-levels in order to gain entry to Manchester Medical School, where after an unremarkable two years, he deliberately failed his pharmacology exams, being at the time unable to tell his parents that he no longer wished to study medicine. He was briefly persuaded to try biochemistry, also at Manchester, but finally realised that whatever else he might be, he was at heart a musician.

Early days: Having no further- or higher- education in music, in a city already served by (among others) the Royal Northern College of Music, his beginnings were humble. He sold his French horn, bought a trumpet from Johnny Roadhouse and played on the streets of Manchester City Centre, first solo then as part of the Oscar Cheerful band, performing a repertoire loosely based around swing-era classics. This first foray into early jazz and swing set him in a direction from which he has often strayed, but to which he has always returned. Moving to Sheffield to help train a marching band, he began playing mostly traditional jazz, with support and encouragement from local trad stars Harry Tindall, Roger Cobbold and others.

As he intimated in his own words "Basically, I'm a jazz musician but I also like to eat", his early earnings revealed that he should also consider other parallel money-making activities. During his life he has also worked professionally as a ballroom dancing instructor, door-to-door salesman, chef, driver, mechanic, handyman, barman, teacher, cavern guide, engineer; he has been a director of a couple of small businesses, worked with the RNIB supporting blind and partially-sighted people training for business.

2007 onward In September 2007 he moved to Poland where he is known primarily as a swing musician, and as a business trainer & coach, concentrating primarily on communication skills. He has also appeared in numerous television commercials (most famously one for an American fast-food retailer, in which he stars as a chef in a 5-star hotel who goes out for a burger - you only ever see the back of his head), and has recorded voice-overs and background voices in a number of accents, most notably for the Polish film "Kurier". He is also the voice of Captain Frank Robbins in the 2020 release of the interactive graphic novel/game "Liberated".

Having been only a few days in Poland, he was invited to the Jazz Camping in Poland, where he met many of the leading lights on Polish jazz. Despite this meeting of musicians being primarily players of much more modern styles, he made many friends and contacts. The first musician he met in Poland was the avant-garde star Zbigniew Namysłowski - the first with whom he played was the legendary Janusz Muniak.

Based in Warsaw, he is currently active in four bands, two of which he runs. These are: The Mark Shepherd Swing Quartet Jazmosfera Wisła Hot 4/5/6 (a co-operative of jazz musicians providing a variety of types of traditional jazz lineups) The Old Timers (Poland's premier traditional jazz septet).

On stage he is primarily known for singing and playing the trumpet, very much in his own style, but also recognizably very much in keeping with traditional and mainstream jazz.