Mark Vincent, this country's greatest tenor, returns to Woolworths Carols In The Domain in 2022.
From the moment he first appeared on our television screens as a fresh-faced 15 year-old, Australia has loved Mark Vincent like one of the family. We have watched him grow up in front of our eyes, and shared in his successes and milestones, including nine consecutive albums reaching #1 on the ARIA Classical Crossover charts.
Now, with the release of his tenth studio album, In The Eyes Of A Child, Mark welcomes us into his family, with a collection of songs that reveal Mark’s own hopes, dreams and aspirations for his future.
Since Mark’s last album his life has changed hugely – first when he got married, and again when his first child was born. It was the birth of his son Matteo in 2020 that most profoundly influenced the album, giving Mark a burst of determination to tackle the next phase of his career with all his heart, the way he has always approached his singing.
“Having my son come into the world – it changed me,” Mark says. “It’s the best thing that ever happened in my life. When he was born, I looked into his eyes and it’s like I knew him forever. It was the strangest, most beautiful feeling ever.”
Mark has always been a gifted interpreter of songs, but having gone through these major life changes he now has the lived experience to connect even more deeply than before. That young boy has become a man, with the maturity to draw on his own life to inform how he performs these songs.
In The Eyes Of A Child is a culmination of everything that has come before. The title track is a song Mark could not have sung three years ago, but thanks to Matteo he can now make it his own. So too ‘Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?’, made so famous by Bryan Adams that initially Mark couldn’t find his own take on it. But then he thought of his wife, and all they had been through together, and he immediately knew exactly how he wanted to sing it.
The album also wears Mark’s influences on its sleeve. There are songs made famous by his idols Josh Groban (‘To Where You Are’) and Andrea Bocelli (‘Canto Della Terra’). There are songs that Mark associates with his grandfather Bruno, who was his inspiration, and who taught him to work hard and follow his dreams, but who would not live to see Mark’s television debut: songs by Ennio Morricone (‘Il Mondo’) and Henry Mancini (‘A Time For Us’, best-known as the ‘Love Theme’ from Franco Zeffirelli's film of Romeo and Juliet), and which moved Mark to tears when he heard the extraordinary arrangement that his longtime friend and collaborator, Chong Lim AM, made especially for him.
It’s obvious that Mark has a deep connection to his devoted fanbase, the ones that have sent his albums to the top of the ARIA charts. It’s something he has never taken for granted, and he dedicates In The Eyes Of A Child to those that have stuck with him throughout his career.
Mark’s career to date has been a series of extraordinary highs, things he never could have imagined when he stepped on the stage of Australia’s Got Talent at 15. After blowing us away with his stunning rendition of Puccini’s world-famous aria ‘Nessun Dorma’, he would go on to win the entire competition in 2009.
In 2014 he made his musical theatre debut in Dirty Dancing, followed closely by being handpicked by Dame Julie Andrews to play Freddy Einsfeld Hill in My Fair Lady. In 2017 Mark recorded his tribute to his boyhood idol, the great Mario Lanza, featuring the groundbreaking virtual duet ‘Because You’re Mine’, with Mark singing alongside the legendary tenor.
In the years since, Mark has toured the UK with Katherine Jenkins, performing at iconic venues including London’s Royal Albert Hall and he has toured Ireland with Irish tenor Tommy Fleming. He has worked with Susan Boyle, Marina Prior and Anthony Warlow, and his Australian national tours are always sold out affairs.
In The Eyes Of A Child marks an exciting new milestone in Mark’s journey, and he looks forward to taking you all along for the ride with him.
