Mark Simmonds is an Australian jazz

Australian jazz

Jazz music has a long history in Australia. Over the years jazz has held a high profile at local clubs, festivals and other music venues and a vast number of recordings have been produced by Australian jazz musicians, many of whom have gone on to gain a high profile in the international jazz...

 tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

 saxophonist, composer, and leader of the group The Freeboppers. Born in Christchurch

Christchurch

Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...

, New Zealand in 1955, he moved to Sydney, Australia when he was 10 years old.

Career

Prominent throughout the 70's, 80’s and 90’s on the Australian jazz scene, Mark Simmonds also worked in many other musical settings such as soul

Soul music

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...

, funk

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

 groups The Dynamic Hepnotics

Dynamic Hepnotics

The Dynamic Hepnotics were a successful Australian soul/blues/funk band during the 1980s. They had major success with their chart topping song Soul Kind Of Feeling in 1984 and 1985, followed up by Gotta Be Wrong later that year....

 and Jackie Orszaczky

Jackie Orszaczky

Jackie Orszaczky was a Hungarian-Australian musician, arranger, and record producer, playing mainly bass guitar, but also various other instruments.-Work:...

’s ‘Jump Back Jack’, also contemporary music settings (Phil Treloar

Phil Treloar

Phillip Maurice Treloar is an Australian jazz drummer, percussionist and composer. In an extensive career devoted to creative pursuit Treloar has addressed himself to the problems of relationship found at the intersection of notated music-composition and improvisation...

's ‘Feeling to Thought’, PipeLine, The Umbrellas) etc. A post-Coltrane

Coltrane

John Coltrane was a jazz saxophonist.Coltrane may also refer to:* Coltrane , an album by John Coltrane from Prestige* Coltrane , an album by John Coltrane from Impulse!...

 saxophonist with a huge sound, Simmonds led his own groups mostly under the name of ‘The Freeboppers’ which held host to many of Australia’s most adventurous musicians.

Mark Simmonds' Freeboppers only released one full length CD entitled 'FIRE' (double CD, 1993, Birdland records) which won an Aria Award for best jazz album in 1995.
However two tracks of an earlier version of the Freeboppers featured on the KMA (Keys Music Association) compilation LP from 1982 entitled 'March of the Five Limbs', as well as some tracks by other groups including Mark Simmonds.

Collaborators include Steve Elphick (bass), Phil Treloar

Phil Treloar

Phillip Maurice Treloar is an Australian jazz drummer, percussionist and composer. In an extensive career devoted to creative pursuit Treloar has addressed himself to the problems of relationship found at the intersection of notated music-composition and improvisation...

 (percussion), David Addes (alto sax), Jamie Fielding

Jamie Fielding

Jamie Fielding was an Australian pianist, composer, and experimental musician.Fielding began his music career as a jazz musician, but later became interested in electronic music, working extensively with a Yamaha DX-7 synthesiser. He performed in Michael Sheridan's Slaughter House 3 ensemble, and...

 (keyboards), Greg Sheehan (drums), Miroslav Bukovsky

Miroslav Bukovsky

Miroslav Bukovsky is one of Australia's leading jazz trumpeters and composer/arrangers.He has won the Jazz Action Society's Jazz Composers Competition several times and also teaches and does session work. He won an ARIA Award for Best Jazz Album of 1994 with his band Wanderlust, formed in 1991,...

 (trumpet), Louis Burdett (drums), Peter Fine, Daniel Fine (sax), Steve Hunter (bass), Serge Ermoll (piano), Kees Steen (guitar), Rob Gador (bass), Michael Sheridan (guitar), Chris Abrahams

Chris Abrahams

Chris Abrahams is a Sydney-based pianist, best known for his jazz work.Abrahams has been a member of the Benders, the Laughing Clowns, The Sparklers and The Necks. He has recorded several solo albums, as well as collaborations with Melanie Oxley from the Sparklers...

 (piano), Cleis Pierce (violin), Samila Sitote (percussion), Andrew Gander (drums), Thierry Fossemalle (bass), Scott Tinkler (trumpet), Simon Barker (drums), Azo Bell (guitar), Duncan Archibald (drums), Diane Peters (harp), Bobby Gebert (piano), Mark Shepherd (bass), Will Guthrie (drums), Scott Lambie (drums), Philip Rex (bass), Tony Buck

Tony Buck

Tony Buck is a drummer and percussionist. He graduated from the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music , becoming involved in the Australian jazz scene....

 (drums).

In an article from the Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 1987, jazz critic Gail Brennan wrote: "Mark Simmond's Freeboppers devastated the Basement with an unbroken hour-and-a-half orgy of rhythm and fire." The article reviews a double-bill with the Dale Barlow Quintet at Sydney's most renowned jazz venue, The Basement, on 11 May 1987. It goes on to say Mark "led a band that had played in public for a month (at the Piccadilly) and their confidence and cohesion were glorious to hear" and concludes; "It is not often that a reviewer of Australian jazz has no choice but to gush. This was one of those nights."

According to Birdland.com.au, Mark "no longer performs or plays".