When I was a teenager I bought a book of 16th Century English Lute Ayres. I remember thinking that learning to play this music would help me write impressive acoustic guitar intros for the progressive rock music I was so enthralled with at the time. I became very fond of the pieces in that book and with the melodies of folk songs and ballads. This short piece for violin and vibraphone is in many ways a nostalgic wink to the music in that book of Ayres and a nod to the youth that thought to buy it. My idea for this piece was that the violin plays with a continuous momentum in the character of a restless folk fiddler. The vibraphone switches between imitating the violin music in the high register, and sustaining long notes in the low register like a small organ. The violin eventually calms down and the two instruments quietly hover on long sustained notes and a melodic fragment. I am very grateful to the Zita and Mark Bernstein Family Foundation who commissioned Ayre for percussionist Aiyun Huang and violinist Mark Fewer, to be premiered at the Harbourfront Centre’s Summer Music in the Garden (Toronto Music Garden) 2019.

The ever-evolving Aiyun Huang enjoys a musical life as soloist, chamber musician, researcher, teacher and producer. She was the First Prize and the Audience Award winner at the Geneva International Music Competition in 2002. As a soloist, her recent highlights include engagements with San Diego Symphony Orchestra, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, St. Lawrence String Quartet, and Aventa Ensemble. The Globe and Mail critic Robert Everett-Green describes Huang’s playing as “engrossing to hear and to watch” and her choice of repertoire as capable of “renovating our habits of listening.” An expert in percussion theatre, her work on the subject has been published in Cambridge Companion to Percussion (2016) and Save Percussion Theater (Mode 242). Recent commissions include new works by Nicole Lizée, Vivian Fung, Philippe Leroux, Roland Auzet and David Bithell. Other ongoing projects include a documentary on the performance practice of Steve Reich’s Drumming and a DVD with So Percussion and Nexus. She holds a DMA from the University of California, San Diego. Between 2004 and 2006, she was a Faculty Fellow at UCSD. Between 2006 and 2017, she led the percussion program at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. She currently holds the positions of Associate Professor, Head of Percussion, Director of UofT Percussion Ensemble, and most recently co-founded Centre for Brain, Performance, and Music Creation with Prof. Michael Thaut (neuroscience and health) and Prof. Eliot Britton (music technology/composition).

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 with groups such as the Fodens-Richardson Brass Band (UK), the Zapp Quartet (Amsterdam), the McGill Percussion Ensemble, and as a featured guest with Stevie Wonder and his band. As a chamber musician he was a founding member of the Duke Piano Trio, has been a member of the Smithsonian Chamber Players for over 15 years, and was violinist with the St. Lawrence String Quartet at Stanford University, where he was Artist-in-Residence. As a conductor he has directed I Musici de Montreal, l’Orchestre Symphonique de Laval, the Newfoundland Sinfonia, the McGill Baroque Orchestra, the Guelph Symphony, the VancouverSymphony and the choir Capella Antica.

Mr. Fewer has been Artistic Director of the SweetWater Music Festival for 16 years, and in 2019 begins a new appointment as Artistic Director of Stratford Summer Music. He is currently Associate Professor of Violin and the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto.