Mark Cunningham

A former member of the No Wave group Mars, trumpeter Mark Cunningham graduated to a similarly experimentalist solo project during the 1990s, inspired by the arid, Middle Eastern textures of Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain. Mars' output was quite small (four tracks on the seminal 1978 compilation No New Wave and a live album), and the band had broken up by the time of their entire back catalog was culled onto Mars 78 in 1986. Cunningham worked with two outfits, Don King and the Spanish-based Raeo, then recorded the 1997 solo album Blood River Dusk. ~ John Bush