THE story of the BMX trumpeter is a tale of an infectious talent who at 17 has already played at venues most musicians only dream about, arenas as grand as the Royal Albert Hall and as hip as the Jazz Café in Camden Town.
It is a story which will turn green anyone who struggled to progress in music lessons beyond spitting Three Blind Mice through a recorder in primary school.
Yet, nobody can be jealous of Mark Crown.
Unassuming but confident, he shows no sign of the arrogance and conceit which could have ruined a student regularly minded of his expert, carefully-honed craft.
And he genuinely does have the individual prowess to turn heads, even when mixing in the waves of musical talent which Camden’s Schools Music Service seems to nurture year on year.
Of all the teens that have gone through the system, hopes are highest for this down-to-earth smiler.
When you meet him, you shake hands with a teenager from Gospel Oak – a cool customer with a mobile phone always at hand and a back-to-front woollen hat pulled over his head.
There is no real sign of an inflated ego and no pretentious attempts to bamboozle with the musical theory he gathered at a specialist school in Pimlico, which became his daily destination soon after his promise on the recorder and violin had been marked out at Rhyl Primary School. You get the impression he doesn’t want to talk about it – he’d rather just play.
“I just got into playing the trumpet,” the jazz-mad teenager says. “It wasn’t about having a pushy parent. I don’t even know how I ended up with the trumpet. I started with lots of different instruments.”
He is now on course for a place at the Royal Academy of Music.
Ask him about influences and he seems well-prepared – names like Miles Davis, Roy Hargrove and Thelonious Monk slide off the tongue. One in the eye for anyone who thought teenagers these days all wanted to be DJs, MCs or rappers.
“If something like Destiny’s Child comes on the radio, its ok if people want to listen to it,” he said. “But I know a few that are into jazz. There are some out there, not many, but there are some out there. I play at the Weekend Arts College in the Old Hampstead Town Hall at the weekends and there are people my age there that are into jazz.”
Late last year, Mark was plucked from his A-Level studies at Camden School for Girls – a mix of business studies, IT and, of course, music – to take part in the now-renowned Christmas musical fixture at the Upstairs At The Gatehouse theatre in Highgate Village.
So, while friends were rocking around the Christmas tree through the holiday season and no doubt testing out their fake IDs, Mark spent most nights, including Boxing Day, hanging out with the big boys in the theatre’s house band for the Hot Mikado, a swing musical spoofing Gilbert Sullivan’s famous operetta.
“It’s a great experience,” he says, in conversation in the theatre’s rehearsal room.
“It’s not all my kind of music but being in a show like this is a great experience. I am glad I am doing it although I think the rest of the band think I play too loudly. That’s the way they look at me. I am definitely the loudest.”
A voice peeps up from behind an oriental-style curtain in the rehearsal room: “And the cheekiest!”
Racky Plews is the woman behind the interruption. She is the missing link in Mark’s leap from the orchestra pit behind Camden School for Girls’ worthy stab at Guys And Dolls last month to the Highgate playhouse.
She doubles as a music teacher at the Sandal Road school – where Mark enrolled once life in Pimlico had become too tame – and the dance choreographer on Hot Mikado.
Racky explains: “I met Mark when I was doing Guys and Dolls and asked him to audition for the Hot Mikado and he said he was interested. The musical director liked him and he was chosen to play. There are only a few his age that are as talented as Mark Crown.”
When the curtain went up on the show last month, Hampstead and Highgate’s chit-chatting theatre-goers filed in for opening night wine and nibbles. The scene provided an interesting contrast.
While in one corner of the room a haggard actor-type wrapped in a cloak and grasping a dainty cigarette holder discussed direction and lighting with another luvvie, Mark – the youngest in the room and wearing the same back-to-front cloth-cap – was prodding his mobile phone in the corner.
Racky says: “He just calls all of those calls ‘business’. We’d like to know what the business is.”
Mark won’t let on but there are two theories.
Maybe the calls are from his girlfriend – a dance student in Brighton. He’ll give you a smile if you ask him whether playing the trumpet is a big draw with the opposite sex. “I’m doing alright,” he chirps with a trademark beam. Apparently, years of playing the trumpet have made his lips stronger than average – he can play for more than two hours when a beginner would be tired in minutes.
Or maybe the ringing on the mobile is part of 2005’s masterplan: to establish The Mark Crown Sextet. It’s due to roll into operation in February or March. He is finalising final members but should have a group looking for gigs in the very near future.
“We will be playing some jazz standards but there will be a little funk and hip-hop as well,” he explains. “I don’t really get nervous. I just like to get on with it. It would have to be a hard exam to get nervous.” Once you’ve played at the Royal Albert Hall in front of your mates, your family, all of Camden’s other schools, John Snow, and still come out on top and with a picture in the New Journal, why would you suffer nervous?
“Those shows at the Royal Albert Hall are a great idea,” adds Mark. “Whatever you say, Camden has to be credited for that.”
Contacts with jazz outfit Tomorrows Warriors, the group which took him to the Jazz Café, could set his sextet on their way.
But the work won’t stop with his own band.
Not missing a trick, Racky has already got Mark to sign up for a slot in her jazz band in which she puts away her saxophone and clarinet to become lead singer. It will be stepping up gigs in London this year.
“Whatever happens to Mark,” Racky continues, “he will always be able to get work. He can make it. We are not into this to be famous, we are in it because we love the music.” Both insist they wouldn’t stoop as low as appearing on a TV talent show, such as X-Factor or Fame Academy, the Witanhurst headquarters of the latter are just a stone’s throw from the theatre where we meet.
Racky adds: “Maybe their just aren’t enough proper opportunities for people to come through. You can count the number of people like Katie Melua and Jamie Cullum who have come through in this genre on one hand. Maybe we need to make it more accessible and encourage more young people to play. Maybe we need to give more people the chance to get into jazz at a young age.”
This was Mark’s first ever full interview and he couldn’t let it be complete without a mention of his mother, Eunice Crown, who he lives with in Mansfield Road.
“I’d say thank you to Camden Music Service for all their help,” he says. “But I’ll also thank my Mum for her support. She was a good singer herself but didn’t take seriously. But she has given me all the support. I’m glad that I have been given the chance to get on with it.”
• Hot Mikado is at Upstairs At The Gatehouse until Sunday January 30.