Mark Fewer
violin
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Renowned quartet set to perform here
March 15, 2010, 12:00 am
Renowned quartet set to perform here
Posted By BILL HENRY
March 12, 2010
The confirmation came just three hours after Mark Fewer reached
violinist Scott St. John on tour in New Zealand to invite The
St. Lawrence String Quartet to the Sweetwater Music Festival.
The quartet agreed that quickly to perform all three days at the
classical music festival in Leith and Owen Sound next Sept. 17
to 19.
"That's pretty big news for us because they're, I'd say, one of
the world's top five touring string quartets," said Fewer, the
violinist and music educator who is Sweetwater's artistic
director.
Like so much that happens at Sweetwater, and for Fewer
musically, landing such a prominent performing string quartet
springs from a Sweetwater Festival connection, Fewer said.
St. John was a featured violinist at the very first Sweetwater
weekend, and has since then joined the St. Lawrence String
Quartet.
He'll return in September with Geoff Nuttall, violin, Lesley
Robertson, viola, and Christopher Costanza, cello, for intimate
Friday night and Sunday afternoon concerts at Leith Church and
at the larger Division Street United Church Saturday night.
"One concert would have been a coup, but they're going to be
here for the whole weekend to play on each show. For me, that's
a very big step forward," Fewer said.
St. John will also be artistic director for one of the three
concerts, while Fewer and clarinetist James Campbell, longtime
AD for the Festival of The Sound in Parry Sound, will each
program one of the other two, as they did last year.
The Sweetwater Music Festival will also add, for the first time,
a children's concert on the Saturday afternoon, aimed at kids
between four and eight years old, Fewer said.
"I can't tell you too much about the details, because we're
actually creating a new work for the kids concert," he said.
"What's concrete about it is that it will have a string quartet
at the back, in other words the backbone of the music will be
string quartet repertoire."
Fewer will narrate and there will be a child actor "going
through a scenario that we've concocted," Fewer said from
Arizona, where he was recording a new CD and rehearsing for a
related concert at Arizona State University.
The busy violinist, who teaches strings now at McGill University
in Montreal, has two new recordings set for release, both with
connections to past Sweetwater events.
He has recorded the complete works of Giovanni Pandolfi, a
little-known Italian composer of the 1700s. He created Italian
Gypsy baroque music, some of which Fewer has performed at
Sweetwater. For this recording, to be released by The
Smithsonian on a new Friends of Music label, Fewer is joined by
Ken Slowik, harpsichord, and Myron Lutzke, continuo cello. Both
have been featured performers at Sweetwater concerts.
The recording probably would never have happened if not for the
connection Fewer established with both musicians through
performances at The Sweetwater Music Festival, he said.
With pianist Peter Longworth, a regular Sweetwater performing
partner, Fewer has also recently recorded the three violin
sonatas of Johannes
Brahms, to be released this summer on Azica, a record label
based in Cleveland, Ohio.
With Fewer's interest in jazz performance growing, including a
scheduled April show at Cobble Beach with Gene DiNovi and
others, two composers are currently writing jazz-influenced
compositions for him to perform.
Phil Dwyer, a featured composer at last year's festival, is
creating a piece loosely based on Vivaldi's The Four Seasons,
for Fewer's solo violin, stage band and orchestra. It will
premier in Montreal in November.
"It gets its basic structure from Vivaldi's Four Seasons
although it will be a celebration of not just Vivaldi but of
(influential tenor sax player) John Coltrane."
A second jazz piece for Fewer is in the works. Cameron Wilson, a
swing violinist with Vancouverbased Van Django, is composing for
solo violin, orchestra and rhythm section. That came after Fewer
and Wilson performed together a tribute last year to the great
French jazz violinist Stephan Grappeli. It will likely premier
some time in 2011, Fewer said.
Full details of the 2010 Sweetwater Music Festival have not been
announced, although Fewer said as always many of the favourite
regular musicians will return.
Bill Henry is a Sun Times news reporter and photographer and a
local musician. Our Sound runs Fridays. He can be reached at
bhenry@thesuntimes.ca
Article ID# 2488649
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