MARK McGRAIN

Mark McGrain is a career jazz composer, performing trombonist, and educator. He’s been a journeyman musician for over fifty years—the past twenty-five spent living in New Orleans, Louisiana working with some of that city’s most iconic artists including Cyril Neville of the Neville Brothers, sousaphonist and founder of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band Kirk Joseph, Anders Osborne, the Radiators, vocalist John Boutté (who was featured prominently in HBO’s series Treme), and the legendary blues and R&B great Walter “Wolfman” Washington.  McGrain has appeared as composer and performer with his own band, PLUNGE, in the Jazz Tent at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as well as other festivals, creative music series, and club venues across the United States. He has released four critically acclaimed albums of original compositions with PLUNGE. All four records received excellent national radio play, each reaching top-ten ranking on the College Music Journal’s (CMJ) Jazz charts and receiving stellar reviews in major print media including being featured on NPR, and DownBeat Magazine’s “Blindfold Test.” His latest album “Love, Time, & Divinations,” 2017, which features vocalist John Boutté (HBO Treme) garnered similar acclaim and enjoyed several months in rotation on Jazz radio shows throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia.  He also performs with the improvisational trio, McGrain-Ozaki-Benetti (MOB), and released a digital album in 2016, “OHO,” with that group. McGrain continues to compose and produce new works for solo and chamber jazz ensembles.

As an educator, McGrain is a former Associate Professor, Berklee College of Music (1983-93), and author of the highly respected and widely used text, MUSIC NOTATION (Hal Leonard Pub). During his tenure at BCM, he was heavily involved with the college’s curriculum development including the creation of an upper-semester Jazz Composition course entitled “Composing With Improvisational Controls for Jazz Ensemble.” This class explored the use of alternative notational devises to direct varying degrees of improvisation within the composition.

His relationship with Berklee reaches back to the late 1960s when, as an early high school student, he enrolled in Berklee’s correspondence course and began composing and arranging for big band. Subsequently, McGrain studied Film Scoring at BCM, after which I moved to Los Angeles where he worked in the Hollywood film and television industry before being tapped by Berklee College to create and implement a music preparation program.

Photographer: Cheryl Gerber