Based in Sydney, solo double bass player Mark Cauvin trained at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the Scuola Internazionale d’Alto Perfezionamento Musicale in Italy with virtuoso/composer Fernando Grillo.

This year Mark will be commencing a new multimedia work titled “Triptych” which will include performing on a revolutionary instrument constructed from three double basses. The work begins with a live videoed performance based in elevators with an actor/writer and photographer that will then be made into an installation art composition.

As a solo double bass player, Mark has dedicated two years of research realising works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, consequently during this period Mark attended the 2010 International Stockhausen Concerts and Courses in Kürten, Germany. The Australian Arts Council provided the funding for Mark to attend the workshops and masterclasses lead by Stockhausen’s most important collaborators. To document this research, Mark is recording all the works realized and producing a vinyl LP with liner notes explaining the details of his realizations.

Since 2011, Mark has begun a new involvement in cross platform arts with Chamber Made Opera. He premiered the opera “Minotaur the Island” at Ten Days on the Island in Tasmania which lead to numerous other living room performances and an opening for the legendary Peggy Glanville-Hicks address featuring Lyndon Terracini, Artistic Director of Opera Australia, at the Mint in Sydney and BMW Edge in Melbourne’s Federation Square. 

In 2009 Mark premiéred and recorded works for solo double bass by Fernando Grillo, Giacinto Scelsi, David Young along with his own realisation of the score “Plus Minus” by Karlheinz Stockhausen at La Mama Theatre, Sydney Conservatorium and for ABC Classic FM.

“Transfiguration”, Mark’s double CD of modern works for solo double bass, was recorded in 2008, funded by the Australian Arts Council. The performances of works by Iannis Xenakis, Giacinto Scelsi, László Dubrovay, Fernando Grillo and Luciano Berio have been reviewed favourably in Europe and Australia. The Wire (UK) magazine hailed the recording as “a brilliant debut”. While the Sydney-based RealTimeArts.net described the CD as “breathtakingly sensuous... Cauvin leads us to a new appreciation of the musical possibilities of the double bass.”

Mark has performed with major contemporary arts festivals and organisations throughout Australia including Melbourne’s 10th Liquid Architecture Festival, the prestigious 2006 Adelaide and Perth International Arts Festivals and in 2011, Tasmania’s Ten Days on the Island Festival.

During his formative years, Mark developed a penchant for experimental music, playing electric bass in the avant-garde band “Avatar”. The band recorded two albums at Big Jesus Burger and Electric Avenue Studios. Mark went on to found the experimental music festival “Obscurism” which toured New South Wales and the ACT in 1992.

Mark defines himself not so much as a ‘double bass musician’, but rather as an artist or sound practitioner who composes, performs and researches sounds using the double bass and synthesizers.

With a solid research background in avant-garde contemporary Italian and German music, Mark now brings European avant-garde concepts into the Australian performing arts scene, his realizations merge sound, theatrics and gesture.