Mark Speight

About Mark

As a young lad in the 1980's, I experienced the magical splendour of Phil Kelsall, Robert Wolfe and Nick Martin playing the Wurlitzer organ in The Tower Ballroom, Blackpool and began learning to play the organ. Many years of hard practise followed as I pursued my dream of being a professional musician. During those years I also listened to Klaus Wunderlich and Brian Sharp. 

In 1986, two days after my 16th birthday, I played my first sessions for dancing on the Wurlitzer at The Tower Ballroom and I was lucky enough to continue doing so for some time after that. This fortunate start to my working life enabled me to set out as a professional musican. This comprised of electronic organ concerts all over the UK in the winter months and various summer season organ playing jobs in Blackpool in the summer months, the latter being with a drummer providing musical backing for shows. That continued until 2002. I must add, these were great years, busy locally in the summer and busy in the winter with the concerts and becoming quite well known and also being featured on Nigel Ogden's 'The Organist Entertains' on Radio 2 regularly. 

By 2002, I was in my early 30's and the aforementioned Blackpool summer season work was starting to look a bit 'iffy' going forward. With marriage and children planned for the near future, I opted to discontinue as a professional musician and instead train to be an accountant. So, that was the end of my concert playing but, I still played now and then locally as and when required. 

I worked in a Blackpool accountancy practice from 2002 until 2013. During those years I achieved the AAT and ACCA qualifications in 2004 and 2008 respectively. In 2013 I became a fellow of The Association Of Chartered Certified Accountants. In 2013, I wanted to strike out on my own with my own home based accountancy practice. Fate intervened though, I was appointed organist at a great entertainment venue near Blackpool. That enabled me to leave the local accountancy practice I'd worked in since 2002.

At first I planned to seek my own accountancy clients but it didn't quite 'pan out' that way because, in 2014, I was invited to re-join the team of organists at The Tower Ballroom Blackpool and in 2016 I was appointed bookkeeper and payroll manager at the local entertainment venue I was organist at. Not only that, I was also running a business selling BMX bicycle parts on Ebay. I ended up just providing accountancy services to family and friends. 

Fast forward to the time of writing (spring 2024) and I'm still playing at Blackpool Tower Ballroom, playing at the aforementioned local entertainment venue once a week, selling on Ebay, doing accountancy for family and friends and doing some church organ playing. In January 2024, at the invitation of Elizabeth Harrison, I returned to performing organ concerts with an appearance at her Much Hoole, Lancashire, 'Cake and Music' events. That was very quickly followed with another concert in South Yorkshire courtesy of Jon Smith. Since then, other concert bookings have started coming in and I'm very much looking forward to fulfilling these.

My recent concerts featured my Roland AT350C Atelier. However, I've now sold that and ordered a Yamaha ELC-02 Electone to play at my concerts. I'm also planning to soon acquire a pair of Bose L1 speakers to provide great sound quality at concerts. Not only that, I'm also working hard on a new theatre organ programme. I'm looking forward to performing concerts and dances anywhere in the UK on theatre or electronic (Yamaha Stagea ELC-02).

Mark's Photo Gallery

Mark's Concert Diary