Mark Inouye joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1999 and became Principal Trumpet in 2008, holding the William G. Irwin Charity Foundation Chair. He was previously principal trumpet with the Houston Symphony and Charleston Symphony and has been a guest principal trumpet with the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony. He has toured the United States with Toccatas and Flourishes, the acclaimed organ and trumpet duo, and was a member of the Empire Brass Quintet. Inouye graduated from the Juilliard School, where he transferred after two years as a civil engineering major at the University of California, Davis.

With the SF Symphony, Inouye has been a soloist in Copland’s Quiet City, Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, Bach’s Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, and Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on three occasions with Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Yuja Wang, and Seong-Jin Cho. He also led and soloed on a Summer with the Symphony program in both jazz and classical styles. As a composer, his works have been performed on the SF Symphony Chamber Music Series.

Equally at home in classical music and jazz, Inouye was a founding member of the Juilliard Jazz Sextet at Lincoln Center and a guest performer at the Hollywood Bowl in the Playboy Jazz Festival. He appeared as soloist in Wynton Marsalis’s video Marsalis on Music, on a Disney Channel production featuring the Who at Carnegie Hall, and released his own debut jazz album, The Trumpet & The Bull.