Mark Simonsen Email & Phone Number

Durham, Nc, Us

Durham, North Carolina, United States

I am currently touring and recording with several bands, most notably The Old Ceremony (vibraphone, organ, vocals, guitar, bass, percussion), The Dead Tongues (organ) and the Minor Drag (guitar, vibes, vocals, drums, xylophone, banjo, percussion). I also produce music for many talented musicians at studio m in Durham, NC. My next big tour takes me through the southeast and to Texas for the SXSW Music Conference.

Along with partner Thom Canova, I run studio m, an audio recording studio that specializes in album oriented projects of the highest creative caliber. We have an amazing facility with a wealth of vintage and modern equipment that is also completely jammed with a virtual museum of extraordinary musical instruments. Our past productions speak for themselves and our future is extremely bright with current projects ranging from Chapel Hill's legendary Squirrel Nut Zippers, to my band The Old Ceremony and up and coming artists like Christy Smith and Dawn Spiggle.

Durham, Nc

Touring through Europe, the central and eastern United States and Canada performing in venues ranging in size from small listening rooms to small stadiums. Some tour management/promotion and music direction.

As a piano technician I honed my craft using well documented techniques and tools. Repairing a wide variety of new and old musical instruments of all sorts requires a high level of knowledge of currently available tools and techniques as well as a determination and creativity to find new answers to problems that may have never been documented before (due often to the rarity of the instruments themselves). This sometimes requires the invention of new tools (part of why I love this field).

This job started as a result of my previous years of volunteering to help build stages in the weeks prior to the annual July 4th weekend festival. The work was hard and the temperatures were painfully hot but there was a beautiful camaraderie between the volunteers. I especially enjoyed working with the volunteers who came from TROSA in Durham. In 2003 or 4, Greg Bell contacted me to ask if I still remembered how to build the stages at the Eno and I said yes. He asked if I would be willing to jump onboard as master carpenter for the festival with a primary responsibility of building the stages and preparing West Point on the Eno for the peaceful, organized influx of thousands of people. As the years progressed, I took more responsibility for site preparation and eventually helped make myself less important by transitioning from modular wooden stages which were charming and beautiful but lots of work, to hired-in aluminum stages. It was important for me to phase back the amount of work that was required of me at the Eno because I had been receiving an annual offer to perform at a festival in Dresden, Germany during the same time period as the preparation for the Eno Festival. I knew that eventually the offer would be one I could not refuse. As much as I enjoyed my work at the Eno, the time was coming for me to move on. In 2011, instead of continuing to work at the Eno River Festival, I took my band to Europe to tour throughout the month of June. The requirements of the Eno job had diminished significantly with the retirement of the modular wooden stages and the nature of the work involved less interaction with TROSA and other volunteers. I still love the Eno River, the Festival, and the people and mission of the Eno River Association and welcome every opportunity to be involved. I still play music at the Festival and will remain active with the Eno River Association for the rest of my life.

Bmusic, Percussion Performance/Compositions

Bachelor Of Music Percussion/Composition Minor In Religious Studies