violin

University of Toronto 

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). 

Mr. Fewer’s discography includes collections of works by such varied musical voices as the baroque gypsy Giovanni Pandolfi ,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 Juno Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album.) He has recorded the Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord Obbligato by J. S. Bach and in 2019 he released his own music written to be performed alongside Idris Goodwin’s “The Body In Crisis.  Recordings also include 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. 
 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. In 2016 he was a featured soloist with Stevie Wonder and his band.
 

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 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. 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 19th season in September of 2022, and took on the role of Artistic Director of Stratford Summer Music in 2019.