MarkGross

Mark Gross plays alto, soprano, tenor, and baritone saxophone, flute, and clarinet — and every one of them carries the sound of a Baltimore church.

Born in Baltimore, the youngest of seven, Mark grew up with music always in the house. His father, pastor of Mt. Zion C.O.G.I.C., filled their home with gospel — a sound Mark credits as the root of his tone to this day. After studying classical music at the Baltimore School for the Arts and a semester at Howard University, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance from Berklee College of Music, where professors Joe Viola and Bill Pierce helped fine-tune his musicianship.

Since graduating in 1988, Mark has built a career most musicians only imagine: touring every continent, performing for royalty, and playing alongside the artists he once studied. He's a two-time Grammy Award winner with the Dave Holland Big Band — What Goes Around (2002) and Overtime (2005) — and has shared stages and studios with Wynton Marsalis, Dizzy Gillespie, Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Heath, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and the Charles Mingus Big Band, among many others.

Mark has numerous credits on Broadway, including "Five Guys Named Moe", "Kat and the Kings", "After Midnight", "Shuffle Along", Or "The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921" and "All That Followed, Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations", and "A Wonderful World : A Louis Armstrong Musical". In film, he can be seen in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X and Forrest Whitaker’s Godfather of Harlem, as well as HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. He currently leads the Mark Gross Quartet and is a recording artist and jazz instruction director at NJPAC..