Mark Fewer
violin
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Challenging repertoire broadens SweetWater festival
September 28, 2009, 12:00 am
By BILL HENRY, SUN TIMES STAFF
> Sept 15, 2009
>
> Mark Fewer is putting a deeper personal stamp on aspects of this
> year's SweetWater Music Festival, which runs Friday, Saturday
> and Sunday.
>
> For the first time, Fewer has arranged two selections for
> soprano and strings and piano for the Saturday night
> concert--songs by Leonard Cohen and Edith Piaf.
>
> Also for the first time this year the Montreal-based violinist,
> known to SweetWater audiences for his own "forward looking"
> repertoire choices as artistic director, shares that direction
> with two very different colleagues.
>
> Banff-based violinist Barry Shiffman, similarly predisposed to
> unusual and challenging repertoire, has programmed the Friday
> night concert at Leith Church. Sunday afternoon's program there
> is designed by the English specialist in Baroque music Adrian
> Butterfield to highlight the differences between Italian
> virtuosity and French elegance in Baroque music.
>
> Fewer said he wanted another distinguished Canadian musician and
> someone with an international reputation to share the artistic
> direction this year.
>
> "I know Barry Shiffman to be quite forward looking with his
> repertoire choices and that's something I think about a lot
> myself," Fewer said recently. "Sweetwater audiences are kind of
> used to programming that will stretch them."
>
> "Adrian is a real specialist in that (baroque) world in a way
> that I'm not."
>
> Much else is also new this year.
>
> Both guest artistic directors will also perform at Sweetwater
> for the first time.
>
> Fewer, who programmed the Saturday night concert, has on offer
> Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Unusually, four different
> violinists--Shiffman, Fewer, Butterfield and Sweetwater stalwart
> Jonathan Crow--will each carry the solo role for a different
> season of the widely-known Vivaldi work.
>
> Also new--Saturday's concert will be the first community event
> at the stunningly rejuvenated Division Street United Church
> following a $165,000 renovation to the chancel area. The chancel
> now doubles as a much larger performance platform, and the
> already very nice acoustics should be much improved with the
> removal of carpeting both from the chancel itself and from the
> front of the sanctuary area.
>
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>
> And jazz will be part of Sweet- Water for the first time, with
> this year's commissioned piece composed by the Canadian jazz
> legend Phil Dwyer.
>
> It was just announced last week Dwyer will also attend the world
> premier of his Sleepless, For Soprano and Piano Trio Saturday
> night. Melanie Conly, cellist Denise Djokic and pianist Peter
> Longworth all return to the festival this year to unveil the
> composition, with Fewer on violin.
>
> Then after hours at the Rocky Raccoon Restaurant downtown,
> Dwyer, Fewer and bassist Joseph Phillips are set to play some
> straight up jazz, or "heads and solos" as Fewer describes it.
>
> "For me that's going to be a real treat," Fewer said by
> cellphone from Montreal.
>
> "I never expected we'd actually manage to get him here at this
> time of the year."
>
> A mainstay on the Canadian jazz scene since the mid-80s,
> Vancouver Island-based Dwyer has recently focused his attention
> on composing and on a summer music education program there. He
> will also coach West Hill Secondary School jazz musicians with a
> visit there Friday afternoon.
>
> While Dwyer's contribution this year is a small part of the
> three-day festival, it's a response to jazz patrons have been
> asking about, Fewer and SweetWater producer Keith Medley both
> said.
>
> "I think it's terrific," Medley said recently. "People have
> asked for this and Mark is a very canny programmer. He has his
> ear to the ground about things like that."
>
> An off-season SweetWater jazz show is also planned in April at
> Cobble Beach, with Fewer, James Campbell, Dave Young and Gene
> DiNovi.
>
> But how much jazz makes it into the SweetWater mix in years to
> come will depend on audience reaction, Fewer said.
>
> "It's early days," he said. "I'll see the response, and once I
> see that response, that will guide me in making future choices."
>
> There's nothing new this year about the quality of the musicians
> Fewer has recruited. They've all been here before, except the
> two assistant directors, and all helped establish SweetWater's
> growing reputation as one of the country's finest small chamber
> music festivals, with an emphasis on string players. That's
> enhanced by the sublime sound at the Friday-Saturday venue in
> Leith Church.
>
> "We've always had a lot of firepower in SweetWater for the
> violins," Fewer said. "I thought we should just highlight that
> power one year and have fun with it, and I thought doing The
> Four Seasons was really the way to do that, with four different
> interpretations of one large piece."
>
> And while seeing some of the country's finest string players in
> Owen Sound is nothing new now for SweetWater, one other aspect
> of the event--this type of unusual collaboration--may also be
> setting a new direction within the classical music community.
>
> Fewer is not aware of another festival which shares artistic
> direction.
>
> "We're kind of burning a new trail," he said.
>
> Nor were most classical musicians keen until recently on sharing
> the stage, or the interpretation of the music, as these four
> violinists will with The Four Seasons Saturday night.
>
> "I'm hopeful that this kind of thing is really a regular part of
> the future. I kind of see that happening anyway in the classical
> music world. People are much more willing to share the stage and
> willing to hear different versions and happy to have their
> voices heard and other voices heard at the same time," Fewer
> said.
>
> "To compare that to classical music as a scene 30 years ago,
> this is a pretty revolutionary step forward."
>
> Fewer hopes colleagues in the wider music community may see the
> collaborative work at Sweet- Water as a model they can pick up
> and build on elsewhere.
>
> "Then I'll know that we've been successful," he said.
>
> Tickets for the SweetWater Music Festival are available at The
> Roxy Theatre at 519-371- 2833.
>
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