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Introducing Mark Northfield and Cherry Mint Koala
WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?
A pianist, composer and singer/songwriter from Berkshire, England (following formative years in Norfolk and a spell in London). Also founder member of occasional piano trio Cherry Mint Koala (alongside two seriously fine musicians: violinist Charlie Brown and cellist Tony Woollard).
I'm fond of making precise, thoughtful and slightly melancholic pop with a prominent classical and theatrical streak, often featuring other vocalists. Somewhere en route I've been labelled 'a treasure' (Bluesbunny), 'a maverick genius' (Rhythm n Booze) and 'an excellent composer' (Altsounds). I've also been accused of writing 'marvelously crafted tunes' (Sputnik). Well, I'm not going to argue with them.
INFLUENCES
ABBA (always top of my list), The Divine Comedy, Pet Shop Boys, Kate Bush, Pink Martini, Penguin Cafe, The Magnetic Fields, John Grant, Cole Porter, Radiohead, Beethoven, Chopin etc. There are so very many I could list. I also like an indecent amount of pop music from across the decades and can't resist a good, old school 12inch version when done well. So there.
My professional work as a ballet pianist has definitely helped shape my eclectic output (esp the satirical stuff of recent years), because everything and anything can with a tune can be thrown into a class somewhere. It's a great environment for experimentation, for putting things in different time signatures and rhythms, for trying out mash-ups, and for finding curious connections and echoes across genres and eras.
UP TO 2016
To date I've released several albums and EPs which can almost certainly be found on your favourite streaming service. Spotify and Amazon links are here. If you're after the mellower side of things then Ascendant is a good starting point (ideal for late-night headphone listening), while Alterations straddles the pop/classical faultline with somewhat greater vigour.
The first Cherry Mint Koala collection, Beguiling Transmissions, contains reworked tracks from both of those albums plus a few intriguing extras: old WW1 marching songs repurposed and a Spanish flavoured waltz take on Donna Summer's classic ‘I Feel Love’.
I've also explored my visually creative side with video promos of stop-motion animation, some colourful puppets, drag/zombie action etc. You can find these and selected Cherry Mint Koala sessions in a curated YouTube playlist or on the Sound & Vision page of this site.
Other bits n pieces to mention… I've been a finalist in the UK Songwriting Contest (for 'The Forecaster' from Alterations), achieved some local BBC radio play for a festive single co-performed with my husband Gareth Forster and a community choir from South London ('Christmas Eve, Gracechurch St' - a charity single for Crisis). BBC R2 also chose to use my cover of Robyn's 'Dancing On My Own' for a series of trails back in 2014; that track was then included on my Europop covers album ‘European Dream’ in 2016.
POST 2016
After that covers project, I had a fair period of mulling what to do next. I was being pretty distracted and depressed by what was then happening in the wider world and the turn for the populist worse signalled by Brexit and Trump.
Discovering various podcasts (especially what was then called Remainiacs, later retitled Oh God What Now) and going on various pro-EU marches helped me understand just how strongly so many other people also felt about this, and what we stood to lose if the Hard Brexiter fanatics got their way. Sadly, they pretty much did, but that story is - of course - not over.
Shortly after Boris Johnson became PM, I made what I thought would be a one-off rough home recording on my phone for a laugh: a short and disturbingly jolly version of ‘Singing In The Rain’ re-titled 'Dying In A Ditch' as per his (in)famous promise. Some people quite liked it. A second jaunty tune swiftly followed with strong WW2 connections to actively annoy the Brexity types (tick!) and weirdly became my most viewed thing on YouTube, tho its brevity may have had something to do with that.
The third one mid October set an exact chunk of text from then Remainiacs podcaster Ian Dunt (attempting to explain the nonsense surrounding GATT Article XXIV in 60 seconds) to an original - if highly derivative - light-operatic style piece interwoven with Chopin's Minute Waltz. The sweary but adorable Mr Dunt retweeted it and my phone started pinging rather more than usual.
And so it continued, partly for the aforementioned cathartic nature of it all, and partly because I just enjoyed the musical challenge each time. Some of these garnered more attention than others, possibly because they caught a highly-charged moment when people were especially irritated: e.g. the Dominic Cummings Barnard Castle affair or The Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget debacle. It was certainly a worthwhile endeavour and I definitely got better at it as I went along!
Here's a curated playlist of them on YouTube
2024…
However, the-site-formerly-known-as-Twitter, which I had used a great deal to promote all that satirical stuff, is now something of a binfire thanks to Elon Musk and really isn't somewhere I want to be spending much time these days. The political tides in the UK are also shifting, with Labour looking set to take office before 2024 is done. So I've left the satire alone for a little while. But another important reason for moving on was embarking on a hefty new recording project.
Whilst I wanted to make another album for several years, the necessary expenses of life were somewhat getting in the way and I was finding it hard to justify the considerable outlay involved. But a completely unexpected and generous offer galvanised me into action, and much compositional scribbling and playing around with ideas ensued.
After the continual grimness of the past few years, I really felt like writing at least some songs which carried a spark of joy. And I also wanted to mess around with some less well-known classical themes and reframe them, as I so often do at work, because I felt some wonderful tunes and pieces from years gone by deserve to be given new life.
The result is two new albums pretty much ready to go: a classical Cherry Mint Koala one and a poppy Mark Northfield one. Some of the best things I've ever recorded are lurking on these two collections, which is pretty exciting. Am currently working on video ideas for releasing individual tracks ahead of the albums themselves, along with some other instrumental piano mash-ups recorded/filmed at home for general light relief and social media profile building.
The first track from the forthcoming CMK album was released in February: Ode to Ukraine in which the anthems of Europe and Ukraine are symbolically entwined.
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