Mark Godfrey

I’ve performed and taught as an electric and double bassist in the Toronto music community since 2006. I regularly tour and record with artists in a variety of popular music genres across North America, but you can often find me performing jazz and jazz-adjacent music in this part of Ontario. I grew up outside a small rural town southwest of London, ON and moved to Toronto to study jazz performance in the mid 2000’s. After briefly living in New York, I moved back to Toronto in 2016 and since then, firmly rooted myself in the jazz and creative music community in Canada.

My bass playing can be heard on over 20 commercially released albums and I’ve released two albums under my name: Prologue (2018) and Square Peg (2020). Featuring a quartet and quintet respectively, my albums feature four terrific Toronto-based musicians and myself on bass and compositions. My music has been described as "sophisticated, yet accessible" (Ted Parkinson, WholeNote Magazine) and my most recent album was described as "a highly persuasive mix of forward-thinking original music" (Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen). I’m currently working on my next record which is slated to be released in 2026.

As a supporting musician, I can regularly be found performing alongside fellow Toronto artists Barbra Lica, Sammy Jackson, and Matt Dusk. Versatility on both electric and double bass has given me the opportunity to record and perform with a variety of other Canadian jazz artists over my career including Kellylee Evans, Joanna Majoko, Teri Parker, Jesse Ryan, Jake Koffman, and the Toronto Jazz Orchestra among others. Aside from teaching here at Wilfrid Laurier University, I am also the bass instructor at National Music Camp and Mayfield Secondary School for the Arts.