Our story
Founded in 2021, ArtBeat is the duo of Mark Morton and Grace Marin, a multifaceted musician couple, with vast experience in chamber music. Thanks to our unique variety of instrumentation, ArtBeat features an equally varied array of musical styles like Light Classical, Baroque, Celtic, Latin, and Pop Music, Ragtime, movie soundtracks and more. We have taken our music to several countries like México, Spain, Argentina and the United States, not only to entertain but also inform and inspire our audience.
"We don’t play “classical music concerts”, but include classical music in our concerts!"
Members
Perfect harmony
Grace Marin Aguilar
Violin
A costarican-spanish violinist. She is currently a member of the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra, and a Teaching Assistant at Texas Tech University where she is pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts degree. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has played in the most important venues and festivals in Costa Rica, Central and South America, and Europe. She is a member of Syntagma Musicum, a group specializing in Latin American baroque and colonial music. With this ensemble, she has recorded two CDs and was the winner in 2013 of the National Award of Chamber Music of Costa Rica. She has played as a soloist and served as concertmaster in several orchestras in Spain and Costa Rica. From 2014-2020 Marín was professor of violin at the Costa Rican National Institute of Music and since 2018 in the School of Music of the University of Costa Rica. Grace Marín completed her undergraduate studies at the Hochschule fur Musik Nurenberg-Augsburg (Germany) and the Master in Musical Creation and Interpretation at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid (Spain).
Dr. Mark Morton
Double bass, Guitar, Keyboard and Voice
Dr. Mark Morton is Professor of Double Bass at Texas Tech University. He was principal bass of the Columbus (Ohio) Symphony Orchestra, in which he was a member for 23 years. He is currently principal bass of the Lubbock, Abilene, and Midland-Odessa Symphony Orchestras. First-prize winner of the 1990 International Society of Bassists Solo Competition, Morton has soloed in Europe, South America, Central America, Canada, Taiwan, and the U.S. Earning his Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees from the Juilliard School, Dr. Morton is only the second bassist to earn the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in the history of Juilliard. A multi-instrumentalist since a teenager, Morton has performed as piano soloist with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. His Albany Records CD, Bottesini Greatest Hits, features Morton accompanying himself on piano, for which American Record Review says, “Mark Morton is a fine player on both instruments, and the music is lovely…” His newly acquired skills as vocalist and guitarist can be enjoyed in his numerous Beatle cover videos on The DrMarkMorton YouTube Channel in which he sings and plays all the parts.
