Mark Simeon Ferguson

ABOUT

Composer/song-writer/arranger/pianist/musical director Mark Simeon Ferguson was born into a musical family in Whyalla, South Australia and raised in Clare. He was a finalist in the National Jazz Awards in 1999 and in the same year he completed a Master of Music in Jazz Performance at the University of Adelaide (where he is currently Head of Jazz). In recognition of his significant contributions to music education, jazz performance, and composition, Mark was awarded the 2022 APRA/AMCOS Luminary Award for South Australia.

In 2024 the Australian String Quartet premiered his work 'String Quartet No. 1: The Precarious Existence of the Plucky Hooded Plovers (The Hoodies)' which they commissioned with the generous support from Peter and Margaret Janssens in celebration of their 60th wedding anniversary. https://asq.com.au/liveconcerts/australian-string-quartet-in-tanunda/

Mark composed the 2025 UNESCO Cities of Music Jazz Relay Composition. His composition '3:23 am' will be performed and reinterpreted by jazz musicians across the globe then spliced together in a video montage to be presented on YOUTUBE on April 30 for International Jazz Day.

His commissions for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra include:

ASO Does Latin with the Marmalade Man (a concert of his own latin jazz works arranged for orchestra)
Herman and Rosie (a children’s show based on Gus Gordon’s book of the same name)
Gospel Messiah (a revision of Handel’s Messiah)
The Bush Concert (a children’s show based on Helga Visser’s book of the same name). The Bush Concert has also been performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the Sydney Opera House, the Melbourne Youth Orchestra in the Recital Centre and the ASO in Harbin, China (after translation into Mandarin)
the elegy ‘For the Lost’ written in response to the devastating 2020 bushfires, which the ASO performed in three concerts in February 2020
The ASO's Welcome to Country 'Pudnanthi, Padninthi' composed by Kaurna men Jack Buckskin and Jamie Goldsmith and arranged and orchestrated by Ferguson.
'Around the World' 2024, a new children's show about Jo-Jo the bar-tailed godwit—superheroes of bird migration
Arrangements/orchestrations of 'Mi Musica', 'Valentina', 'Cha Cha Riff' and 'Como Fúe' to feature Cuban trumpet sensation Lazaro Numa for 'ASO at Hart's Mill'
Arrangement/orchestration of 'Litjatitjatilu' by Electric Fields for the Adelaide Festival's 2024 'Floods of Fire' project

Mark created the song cycles The Moral of the Story (2013) and Next Stop North Terrace (2018) for the SA Public Primary Schools Music Festival with each work performed by over 8000 children in the Adelaide Festival Theatre. Mark’s world jazz ensemble Marmalade Circus recorded five albums and performed at the Manly and Thredbo Jazz Festivals and the Sydney Festival. He also has a family band, Marmalade Five with his wife Susan and their three children, performing his many children’s songs.

As a pianist Mark has performed with artists across many genres including Rufus Wainwright, Jazzmeia Horn, Nancye Hayes, Paul Capsis, Lady Rizo, Mark Murphy and Ray Vega. He has been Musical Director for shows for Tina Arena, Johanna Allen, Camille O’Sullivan, Rhonda Burchmore, Rachael Beck, the Adelaide Cabaret Festival (2023, 2022, 2021, 2018, 2017 galas), UNSUNG, the Backstage Club, and for the Adelaide Festival Centre’s Walk of Fame Gala and 50th Birthday Gala and Her Majesty’s Closing (and reopening) galas. He was Musical Director and pianist for QPAC’s 2019 Songs of Hope and Healing in the Brisbane Concert Hall and he was co-curator of the 2018 International Jazz Day celebrations for the Adelaide Festival Centre.

UNESCO Jazz relay 2025 demo _edited_edit

MARMALADE CIRCUS

Mark formed his Mark Ferguson Quintet in 1997 with the late trombonist Nick Mulder, the late alto saxophonist Scott Griffiths, bassist Tim Bowen and drummer John McDermott.

They performed as emerging artists in the 1998 Adelaide Festival with the late tenor saxophonist Mike Stewart replacing Griffiths. Later that year the group was renamed Marmalade Circus and performed at the Glenelg Jazz Festival with Dusty Cox joining on lead alto. The group performed at the Thredbo and Manly Jazz Festivals in 2001 and the 2002 Sydney Festival's Jazz in the Domain concert.

They recorded their first album, the live CD Tropical Fruit Chunks in 2001, followed by and then there were ten in 2005 and Yup! in 2009. In the Adelaide Review Robert Dunstan said that 'YUP…is a classy album—world class in fact…” In the Australian the late John McBeath wrote that Ferguson is '... a composer of considerable ability.'

Over the years the group has varied in size from a sextet to tentet. Leading Adelaide jazz players have been regular members of the ensemble including reed players Adam Page, Chris Soole, Tom Pulford, Mike Stewart, Dusty Cox and Jon Hunt, trumpet players Warren Heading, Pat Thiele and Chris Weber, trombonists Nick Mulder, Gareth Davis, Luca Spiler, Alex Taylor and Tom Voss, bassists Shireen Khemlani, Tim Bowen and Ross McHenry, drummers John McDermott, Ben Todd, Gilli Atkinson and Jarrad Payne, and percussionist Steve Todd.

In 2014 Ferguson expanded the ensemble into the 20-piece latin jazz orchestra Orquesta Mermelada featuring Fabian Hevia on percussion and Christian Cifuentes on vocals and percussion.

Marmalade Circus went on hiatus for many years but re-formed in November 2024 to perform a sold-out show at the Queen Street Jazz Festival with new member Jasmine Hall on trombone (Mark's second daughter), special guest Lazaro Numa (from The Cat Empire) and with a cameo from Mark's son Luka on alto saxophone.

ORCHESTRAL WRITING

Ferguson's first substantial orchestral writing was his 2007 revision of Handel's Messiah, Gospel Messiah, for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (ASO), featuring Doug Parkinson, Paulini, Trace and James Morrison. In The Australian Graham Strahle wrote “It is a brilliantly swinging and uplifting take on Handel's score… Ferguson has come up with an absolute winner” while Rodney Smith in The Advertiser described the work as “a kaleidoscope of strikingly crafted Gospel arrangements from Ferguson’s fertile pen.”

In 2021 Ferguson was commissioned by the ASO to arrange and orchestrate two songs by Kaurna men Jack Buckskin and Jamie Goldsmith to function as an Acknowledgement of Country. The ASO first performed the combined work entitled 'Pudnanthi, Padninthi' in the Adelaide Festival Theatre in February 2021 and they have since performed the work at the beginning of most concerts. https://www.aso.com.au/about/acknowledgement-of-country/

In 2024 he was commissioned to write a new children's show entitled 'Around the World'. He wrote a children's story for the show which explores the accidental international travels of Jo-Jo the Bar-Tailed Godwit (BTG's are superheroes of bird migration) which features his arrangements of songs and music from Korea, China, northern India, Oman, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Spain, France, Germany and Norway intertwined with new compositions and songs. The work explores themes including the impact of climate change; the importance of family; geography; international interconnection; the wonders of animal migration all mixed together with warmth, humour and maybe a few tears. https://www.aso.com.au/events/around-the-world/

Mark wrote new arrangements/orchestrations of 'Mi Musica', 'Valentina', 'Cha Cha Riff' and 'Como Fúe' to feature Cuban trumpet sensation Lazaro Numa for 'ASO at Hart's Mill in 2024.

In 2023 he wrote the arrangement/orchestration of 'Litjatitjatilu' by Electric Fields, a song which was commissioned for and performed at the Adelaide Festival in the 2024 'Floods of Fire' project

In 2018 the ASO performed a 90 minute show of Ferguson's Latin compositions/arrangements as 'ASO does Latin with the Marmalade Man' (2018). In The Advertiser Pat Wilson wrote 'A night full of original material written by a single composer for his jazz band, then arranged by him for band plus orchestra, threatens monotony. This concert was anything but. In rich harmonic textures and rhythms...composer and pianist Mark Simeon Ferguson showed himself to be whimsically inventive, technically formidable and charmingly collaborative with both his jazz compadres and the orchestra itself....'

In 2014 Mark wrote a score for chamber ensemble to Helga Visser's book The Bush Concert, which he expanded in 2015 for full orchestra This work has been performed in the Sydney Opera House (SSO), the Melbourne Recital Centre (MYO) and by the ASO across SA and in Harbin, China after translation into Mandarin. https://www.aso.com.au/the-bush-concert/

In 2016 he wrote a score to Gus Gordon's book Herman and Rosie which the ASO have toured around SA.

https://www.aso.com.au/events/herman-and-rosie/

In 2020 he was asked by the ASO to write an elegy For the Lost, as a response to the devastating bushfires which they performed at the Grainger studios in three concerts in February 2020.

Ferguson also regularly writes other orchestral arrangements of pop, light classical and children's music for the ASO.

MUSICAL DIRECTION

MUSICAL DIRECTION
or pianist in
cabaret/musical theatre

Musical Director/pianist/bv's, Johanna Allen, Pop Culture/Vulture, Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2024
Musical Director/pianist, Variety Gala, Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2023
Musical Director/pianist/bv's, Lou BlackwellLove on the Left Bank, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, 2022
Musical Director/pianist/bv's,Tina Arena, Wendy Matthews, Lior, Sophie Koh, Thando, Jess Hitchcok Songs My Mother Taught Me Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2022

Musical Director/pianist, Variety Gala, Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2022
Musical Director/pianist, Variety Opening Gala, Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2021

Musical Director/pianist, A Right Royal Gala, reopening of Her Majesty's Theatre, 2020
Musical Director/pianist, Amelia Ryan/Libby O’Donovan, UNSUNG, the inaugural Frank Ford Commission for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, 2019, Adelaide Fringe 2021 (weekly Fringe Award winner), Festival of Voices (Hobart) 2021
Musical Director/pianist, Songs of Hope and Healing, Queensland Performing Art Centre, 2019
Musical Director/pianist, Johanna Allen, Cake, Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2018
Musical Director/pianist, Her Majesty’s Theatre Closing Benefit Concert, 2018
Musical Director/pianist, Walk of Fame Gala, Adelaide Festival Centre, 2018
Musical Director/pianist, Closing Gala, Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2017 and 2018
Musical Director/pianist, Johanna Allen, Euromash, Melbourne Recital Centre 2017, Adelaide Fringe 2021
Musical Director/pianist, Johanna Allen, The Songs that Got Away, Melbourne Recital Centre 2015, Noosa Long Weekend Festival 2015, Glen Street Theatre 2016,
Pianist, sometime Musical Director, Camille O’Sullivan, Changeling (and other shows), Helpmann Winner for Cabaret 2015
Pianist, Beccy Cole and Libby O’Donovan, The Cowgirl and the Showgirl, Helpmann Award Nominee for Cabaret 2015
Pianist, Lady Rizo, Adelaide Cabaret Festival and Festival of Voices (Hobart) 2016
Musical Director/pianist, Mother Wife and the Complicated Wife, Australian tours 2009-2015
Musical Director/pianist, Channel 9 TeamKids Easter Telethon, 2014.
Assistant Musical Director/pianist, Mother Wife and the Complicated Wife, New York Music Theatre Festival, 2013
Musical Director/pianist, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Gospel Messiah, Adelaide Festival Theatre, 2007
Musical Director/pianist, The Gospel According to Elvis Presley, Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2005
Musical Director/pianist, The Fabulous Singlettes, Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2005

CHILREN'S MUSIC

CHILDREN'S MUSIC

In addition to his writing for the ASO (see The Bush Concert and Herman and Rosie in Orchestral Writing) Ferguson has spent much of his adult life writing and performing music for children. His first major tours (1993-95) were accompanying Australian children's legend Peter Combe.

From 2001-2013 Ferguson co-led the latin-jazz group Marmalade Jam with his wife Susan Ferguson and long term musical cohorts bassist Shireen Khemlani and drummer John McDermott, performing over 400 shows right across Australia (and Singapore) for Musica Viva in Schools.

Ferguson has written many songs and arrangements for the SA Public Primary Schools Music Festival. He created the song cycles The Moral of the Story (2013) and Next Stop North Terrace (2018) for them with each work performed by over 8000 children (over 12 shows) in the Adelaide Festival Theatre.

Mark has been writing for That Science Gang https://www.thatsciencegang.com/ the brainchild of scientist/creator/director/ performer David Lampard. David and his team create science-inspired theatre productions for young people and their families... and then take those shows on tour across Australia and the world!

Mark wrote the theme song for The Alphabet of Awesome Science which has been performed over 300 shows including two seasons at the Edinburgh Fringe and a season at The Festival Internacional Santa Lucia Monterrey in Mexico. https://www.thatsciencegang.com/alphabetscience

Mark composed, arranged and recorded all of the songs for You Are A Doughnut to lyrics by David Lampard—which just celebrated their 100th show. https://www.thatsciencegang.com/youareadoughnut
Mark is currently writing music for David's new show Splish, Splash, Splatacular which is premiering in the 2025 Adelaide Fringe. Stay tuned! https://www.thatsciencegang.com/splishsplash

Mark also leads the band Marmalade Five, which is comprised of Mark, his wife Susan and their three children. They perform Mark's songs regularly around Adelaide, including a spot at the 2019 Dream Big Festival.