HEADLINES

Introducing Mark Durant the guitarist from Denver

Mark Durant was born in Pueblo Colorado and was raised 120 miles north in Denver. He is the second child born to his parents between 2 sisters. His Mother was a bookkeeper and his father was a truck driver. Mark has lived in the Denver area his entire life. 

When he isn’t recording new music he enjoys spending time with friends, checking out the local music venues in Denver and spending time with loved ones. Mark’s early exposure to music was listening to his Mother and Grandmother play the piano or organ. 

When Mark entered the 5 th grade he had the opportunity to learn how to play the clarinet and continued playing through his 6 th grade year. During those school years he also learned how to read music. He realized that he wanted to learn how to play other instruments so he purchased his 1 st guitar at the age of 14.

He practiced everyday after school and as time went on he was able to learn songs that were played on the radio. He was heavily influenced by the music of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Al Dimeola, and John McClaughlin. When he felt the time was right he started playing in bands that played cover tunes of the top rock songs. 

The bands played nightclubs and small venues in the Pacific Northwest. While he was on the road traveling he had the opportunity during downtime to write lyrics and compose music for his own songs. When he was home Mark was able to concentrate on his own music uninterrupted. As time went on it became apparent that traveling and playing other bands songs wasn’t the direction he wanted to continue in. 

He ended his relationship with the band so he could work on his own original music. He started submitting his lyrics to poetry competitions, and has won numerous awards over the years and has had them published in Poetry compilation books. 

In the early 2000’s Mark started writing and composing in a different direction away from rock. This new direction for him produced his first Instrumental Jazz / Fusion Album, “Blue’s After Midnight “in 2003.

Since then he has released 3 additional albums, 2 of which “Polynesian Funk and Oriental Jazz”, and “Imagining” have won awards as best Jazz albums. The 3 rd album “Movement in Time” produced an award for a single song “Just for Now”. 

Some of Marks other songs, from these albums have enjoyed airplay on I-Tunes radio, Indie Music Channel, and the College Underground radio channel, “Something Whispers”, and “Imagining”, and “Just for Now”.  

Mark plays currently through a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier with a Fender Stratocaster, A Fender Telecaster, A Gibson Nighthawk or a Gibson ES 339 with a line 6 pedal board for live performances. In 2010 Mark was in the top 20 guitar players to be chosen from to play Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival. 

Unfortunately he was not chosen but is known as a very tasty guitar player in the musical community.  Currently Mark Has No Tour Dates scheduled as he is in the beginning stages of recording his newest album which is scheduled to be released in 2020.

Though he was featured in recently released Lifoti's September 2019 issue 09, you can check it from below link's for your country:

1 comment:

  1. Hey Mark, congratulations. Very,very impressive. I look forward to hearing your new work, and hope this helps your music touch more people. Scott

    ReplyDelete