Mark Fewer – Violin

Violinist Mark Fewer leads a multi-disciplined life in music.  Violin soloist, chamber musician, orchestral leader, artistic director, conductor, arranger, teacher, jazz violinist, recording artist and occasional radio host, he has performed worldwide to great critical acclaim.  Described as “intrepid” (The Globe and Mail), “genre-bending” (National Post), “profound” (The WholeNote), and “freaky good”(The Gazette), he has performed around the world in halls such as Carnegie, Wigmore and Salle Pleyel, and is equally at home in recital venues such as Bartok House (Budapest) to Le Poisson Rouge (NYC) to The Forum (Taipei).  As a soloist, he has performed with the symphonies of Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Quebec, San Francisco and Melbourne, as well as groups such as the Fodens-Richardson Brass Band (UK), the Zapp Quartet (Amsterdam), and the McGill Percussion Ensemble.  As a conductor he has directed I Musici de Montreal, l’Orchestre Symphonique de Laval, the Newfoundland Sinfonia, Guelph Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, the McGill Baroque Orchestra and the choir Capella Antica.  

Mr. Fewer’s discography includes collections of works by such varied musical voices as the baroque gypsy Giovanni Pandolfi (released on the Smithsonian’s prestigious Friends of Music label, it has been a best-seller at the museum since 2009), the American “Bad Boy of Music” George Antheil (with pianist John Novacek, it is used as soundtrack material for the cult American hit tv series “American Horror Theater – Freak Show”), jazz great Phil Dwyer (Changing Seasons, a work written expressly for Mr. Fewer showcasing his unique talents in both classical and jazz idioms, it won the 2012 Juno Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album and was an iTunes bestseller), and Bramwell Tovey (Nine Daies Wander, winner of two UK Brass Band Record of the Year awards, the piece has Mr. Fewer reciting famous lines of Shakespeare while re-enacting the publicity stunt of comedic actor William Kemp in 1600).  Other recordings include the Violin and Piano Sonatas of Johannes Brahms (with pianist Peter Longworth), and the Jazz Sonata of Bohuslav Martinu (with Art of Time director Andrew Burashko, piano). His latest recording of the Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord Obbligato by J. S. Bach was released on the new LEAF MUSIC label.   2019 will see the online record release of his own music, written to be performed alongside American street poet Idris Goodwin’s “The Body In Crisis”.  Also forthcoming are recordings of the Mozart Piano Quartets (using Thomas Jefferson’s violin), Schubert’s Trout Quintet with the Smithsonian Chamber Players, and the complete String Sonatas of Rossini. 

Over the next three seasons, he will premiere new violin works by composers Bramwell Tovey, David Braid, Drew Jurecka, Matthias Maute, Richard Mascall, John Novacek, Alissa Cheung, Michi Wiancko, Atar Arad  and others.

As a collaborator, Mr. Fewer has been violinist with the Duke Piano Trio for more than twenty years, a member of the Smithsonian Chamber Players for 15 and was, until recently, violinist with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. He has shared the classical stage with performers such as Edgar Meyer,  Marc-Andre Hamelin, Leon Fleisher, Elizabeth Wallfisch, James Campbell, Anssi Kartuunen and others, and the jazz stage with Dave Young, Phil Dwyer, Jim Vivian, Jodi Proznick, Brad Turner, Gene DiNovi and Pekka Kuusisto. In 2016 he was a featured soloist with Stevie Wonder and his band during the Songs in the Key of Life tour. 

Mr. Fewer has been a dedicated teacher for 20 years, having been on the faculties of the Glenn Gould School, the University of Toronto, McGill University, and recently as Artist-in-Residence at Stanford University.  He has taught during the summers at the Domaine Forget for more than 18 years, as well as having taught at the Banff Centre, the Colorado College Summer Music Festival, NYO Canada, the Vancouver Academy of Music, the Dresden Hochschule, the Australian Youth Orchestra, the University of British Columbia, the University of California Santa Barbara, Arizona State University and others.  His students have distinguished themselves by winning positions in major ensembles and orchestras in North America and Europe, including the Handel & Haydn Society (concertmaster), the Montreal Symphony, the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, the Danish Philharmonic and others.  He was the William Dawson Scholar at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University where he taught  violin, baroque violin, chamber music and string improvisation. 

He is the founding Artistic Director of the SweetWater Music Festival, which celebrates its 16th season in September of 2019, and  he  will take on the role of Artistic Director of Stratford Summer Music in 2019.