Popular local artist Mark Burgess — an advertising designer, performer with the band Last Rites and former “Voice of Trimingham’s” — has died suddenly at the age of 56.

Mr Burgess was in Miami, Florida with his wife Maggie Toruno Coelho Burgess when he died earlier this month. Originally schoolmates at the American Nicaraguan School, they had met again at a reunion in Miami in 2004 and were married in Bermuda in April, 2005.

The son of Bermudian William Burgess and Trinidadian Margaret Pierre, Mr Burgess is also survived by his brother Owen and sister Michelle Collins.

During his years in Nicaragua, Mr Burgess distinguished himself academically with one of the highest SAT scores in Central America, as well as becoming class valedictorian, his wife recalled.

He also learned to play the guitar there.

Mr Burgess was remembered by his former business partner Donna Tiffin, with whom he ran the advertising studio Tango Multimedia for many years, as a designer who learned the trade largely under his own initiative.

“Mark was self-taught, like a lot of guys in Bermuda in that business, which is pretty amazing — advertising changed over to digital over the course of his career,” she said.

“Mark was a very good artist who could draw just about anything and kept sketchbooks from his trips overseas. They were beautiful drawings.”

Mr Burgess cut his teeth in the classic Bermudian department store Trimingham’s. He created signs for the store as well as radio ads in which he functioned as the Voice of Trimingham’s.

He showed such promise that Trimingham’s sent him to New York’s Parsons School of Design.

After the demise of the store, Mr Burgess set out with his own enterprise.

At its heyday, Tango Multimedia — based on Queen Street in Hamilton — thrived as “a small business with great clients”, Ms Tiffin said.

The company promoted Bermuda tourism with the New York PR firm J. Walter Thompson.

Ms Tiffin also remembered her former colleague as “a very, very nice and interesting guy to talk to — very smart”, who played with flight simulator programmes to unwind after work.

The company lasted nearly 15 years following which Mr Burgess forged out on his own as a freelance designer.

Close friend Craig Clark said Mr Burgess had been the best man at his wedding 23 years ago.

“He loved music — art and design was a really big thing for him and he could converse on a wide variety of subjects; he was really well up to date on current affairs,” Mr Clark said.

Mr and Mrs Burgess lived in Southampton, Bermuda, but over the past year had divided their time between the Island and Miami.

Musician Chris Broadhurst said Mr Burgess had played bass in the band Last Rites that he founded with his brother, with guitarist Keith Phillips and drummer Jamie Petty.

One of the band’s lasting hits was the 1999 song Chained to the Rock, which featured on the album “Irresponsible”.

Last Rites gigged at venues around the Island, especially the Bermuda Folk Club, in a career spanning roughly 1992 to 2005, Mr Broadhurst recalled.

“The most memorable, from my point of view, was 2004, when Not the Um Um Show had their 20th anniversary show and Last Rites came on as the backing band.”

In a 1994 interview with The Mid-Ocean News, Mr Burgess described the group as “rock and blues”. It was a regular fixture of Hamilton’s Concerts in the Park.

“What we do is fun,” Mr Burgess said. “We look back a bit in our music, but rock and roll has continued to thrive and develop, so we have a pretty broad repertoire.”

Last night Owen Burgess paid tribute to his brother and band mate.

“I’m afraid I just can’t put in words anything that would express the love I have for my brother and the loss that many are experiencing at this time,” Mr Burgess said.

“I spent my entire childhood attempting to just touch the bar that had been set by my multi-talented brother. As we aged we became more like compatriots, each of us finding our strengths and weaknesses and sharing them with each other, mostly during our 11-plus years making music together.

“From our time with the Dischords, a five-piece acoustic guitar band that travelled the Jam session and Folk club circuits to the many years as band members of Last Rites.

I guess I can take credit for Mark’s guitar playing abilities — for my tenth birthday my father got me a handmade Nicaraguan steel string guitar that I attempted to learn how to play. Mark promptly picked up my fathers old Hofner classical guitar and never looked back.”

According to his wife, a memorial celebration of Mr Burgess’s life is to be held for friends and extended family in Miami.