In the Spotlight: Mark Traves

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: MARK TRAVES

RCM Front of House Manager Mark Traves talks to Upbeat about receiving his HonRCM in leopard print and serving Prince Charles a cuppa.

Front of House Manager Mark Traves

M ark Traves’ RCM highlight reel is an entertaining watch. A selection includes: serving dinner to Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya in what is now the Grove Room, watching Leopold de Rothschild’s face light up as he set down his chocolate mousse dessert, and having his photo taken with Linda Gray from Dallas – now his screensaver.

‘Shirley Bassey once told me I was wicked for offering her chocolate chip cookies’, he continues. And then there was the time he served HRH The Prince of Wales a cold cuppa.

‘I used to give Prince Charles his tea when he visited. One year, when we were ready for him to enter the Concert Hall, I stood on the stage with his tea ready, little knowing that a student had challenged him to a game of pool in the SU. He finally arrived 20 minutes later, and I had to present him with a cold cup of tea’.

Of course, Mark’s fondest RCM memory is receiving his HonRCM in 2017. ‘It was one of the proudest moments of my life’, he recalls. ‘I wore a petrol blue suit with a yellow Vivienne Westwood shirt and burnt orange Vivienne Westwood silk tie. Sadly, my dad had died a few years previously, and so I wore a pair of his cufflinks. They were very 1970s: chrome, with large purple amethyst stones. My shoes were leopard print and as soon as I saw them I knew they were the shoes I wanted to wear to meet the future King of England’.

Mark receiving his HonRCM from HRH The Prince of Wales in 2017

Mark joined the RCM as Deputy Catering Manager in 1997 and later moved to the Facilities team. In August 2018, he became Front of House Manager.

A lot of behind-the-scenes work goes into this front of house position. ‘The RCM is a huge oiled machine,’ he says, ‘there is so much that the general public don’t get to see.’

Mark assigns concerts to his pool of stewards each season and, before every event, runs through a briefing, fire check and fire walk. He works closely with backstage staff too, giving them 10, 5 and 2 minute radio warnings to get the performers ready to go on.

Mark’s is a customer-facing role as well, and so patience is a mandatory requirement. It can be challenging trying to get 400 people into their seats so that a performance can start on time. ‘I have had people wanting to take their bicycle into the concert because they want to be able to see it’, says Mark. ‘One customer wanted to bring her own chair into the Britten Theatre because she didn’t like velvet seats’.

My shoes were leopard print and as soon as I saw them I knew they were the shoes I wanted to wear to meet the future King of England.

His passion for the job, however, is obvious, and it’s the little concert-goers he finds the most rewarding. ‘For many kids who come to an RCM Sparks event, it’s their first time in a theatre or concert hall,’ he explains. ‘Seeing their faces when they see the organ or when the lights go down in the theatre is magical, and their cheer when the performers come on is electrifying’.