MARK WITHERS

Mark Withers performs and creates music working alongside musicians from all walks of life. He designs and leads creative outreach projects as well as training programmes for artists, collaborating regularly with the London Symphony Orchestra, Accentus, La Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth, the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam, Insula Orchestra and the Paris Conservatoire. In the operatic field, Mark has collaborated with the Festival d’Aix, English National Opera, the Royal Ballet and Opera, Glyndebourne and the Théâtre du Châtelet. Mark has helped to establish new outreach programmes with groups including the Hallé Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Fundacio “La Caixa” and the Orquesta Nacional de España.

 

As a performer, he has performed on modern and period instruments with orchestras including the Orchestre des Champs Elysées, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Orquestra de Cadaqués, where Mark was a member from 1988 to 2001.

 

Mark has a special interest in music and vulnerable communites. From 2000 to 2004 he was musician in residence at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London where he worked with children undergoing transplants and suffereing from cancer. For over 25 years he has led the LSO’s programme for children in hospitals and special schools and he directs the inclusive ensemble, LSO Create. Mark is artistic advisor to the LSO’s community programme. Since 1995, Mark has been a lead musician at the charity Jessie’s Fund, providing music for disabled and life-limited children throughout the UK.

 

Mark's initial training was at Cambridge University and the Guildhall School of Music and embraced mathematics and social psychology as well as music. As such, it is no surprise that much of Mark’s work breaks down barriers between disciplines. He was at the centre of the LSO's outreach activities at the Aix-en-Provence Festival from 2008. Projects there ranged from the creation of film scores to work at a WWII transit camp with participants coming from the widest possible segments of the population in Aix and Marseille. A particular highlight was “Boras”, a piece devised with choreographer Thierry Thieu Niang, that was based on lullabies from the Comoros Islands. Mark directed the Artistes Relais programme in Aix, developing skills in young professional artists. “Creation” (2009-10) and "Sleeping Sense" (2016) with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment saw Mark working in tandem with scientists from Oxford University. Pieces with the LSO include “Create Creation” (2022) using images from the Hubble Space Telescope and “Rembrandt” (2025), a collaboration with the National Gallery. In 1993, Mark’s Gamelan programme with the Hallé Orchestra was awarded a Gold Medal by Queen Elizabeth II for work of lasting value to the community.