Marcus Goddard is the Associate Principal Trumpet with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and has performed with Vancouver New Music, Standing Wave, the Vancouver Opera, the CBCOrchestra and the VSO Brass Quintet. Recent performing highlights with the VSO include playing Mahler’s Blumine movement from the First Symphony and the trumpet solo of Gyorgy Ligeti’s virtuosic Mysteries of the Macabre. Goddard is a member of Vancouver’s Turning Point Ensemble.

Goddard has performed extensively throughout North America and Europe. As principal trumpet of the Tenerife Symphony, he participated in a recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony. He has held principal positions in the Owensboro Symphony, the Colombus, Indiana Philharmonic and has played Co-principal trumpet in the Spoleto Festival, the Aims Festival in Graz, Austria and the National Orchestral Institute. Goddard received a Bachelors Degree from the University of Michigan under Armando Ghitalla and Charles Daval and earned a Masters from Indiana University as a pupil of John Rommel.

As a composer, Goddard has over thirty-five works in his catalog, including four recent pieces for large orchestra as well as many works for varied chamber ensembles. His most recent work, I Send Only Angels, was commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and premiered in February 2007 with Roberto Minczuk conducting. Critics, musicians, and audience members alike praised the work, describing its “shimmering, translucent, winning eloquence” and “perfectly judged” form and structure. Following the critical acclaim of that premiere, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal programmed I Send Only Angels for performance in November 2007, to be conducted by Bramwell Tovey.

Goddard has had three other orchestral works performed during the last several years. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra performed My End Is My Beginning and Stay On the Sea while the Victoria Symphony performed Angels. Goddard’s Voices Rising, for chamber ensemble, was premiered by the Turning Point Ensemble in March 2006, was broadcast on CBC Radio, and was performed again in Powell River, B.C. by members of the Chicago, Columbus, Vancouver, and Victoria Symphony Orchestras. Alexander Varty of the Georgia Straight wrote in his review that “Marcus Goddard’s Voices Rising was just beautiful.”

Prior to his focus on works for orchestra and large ensemble, Goddard composed many pieces for chamber ensemble. He performed his work, Exothermic, for trumpet and piano trio, with both the Quiring Chamber Players and Standing Wave Ensemble. Goddard’s Millennia Music for brass quintet was performed by the VSO Brass Quintet in 2002 and broadcast by CBC Radio.

His work for large brass ensemble, Supernovas Collide, was premiered by the Vancouver Brass Choir in the fall of 2001 and Desolation Sounds, for brass quartet, was premiered by members of the Chicago and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras in 2005. Goddard recently completed Reflections on Slayton Pond, a work for flute and piano commissioned by the Vermont duo, Sarabande. He has composed a piano trio and violin duo as part of a series of chamber works for young players in the Quiring Chamber Music School in Vancouver.

Goddard’s String Quartet was performed for many young audiences in British Columbia public schools during 2002. Goddard composed and produced the score to the film, Breakfast at Sharkey’s, and has composed two modern dance works, which were staged in Indiana.

Goddard was born in 1973 in Vermont to an American father and French Canadian mother. He has participated in seminars with William Bolcom, William Albright, and Krystof Penderecki and has attended lectures of Philip Glass and Samuel Adler and is an associate composer with the Canadian Music Centre.