Ayreheart Renaissance-folk Quartet
​7-9 pm Saturday, October 18, 2025
Second Stage | Amherst (194 2nd Street, Amherst, VA)
Heather Aubrey Lloyd, vocals, acoustic guitar; Ronn McFarlane, Lute;
Willard Morris, colascione, electric bass, violin; Mattias Rucht, percussion

Ayreheart, a progressive, renaissance-folk quartet founded by GRAMMY nominated lutenist Ronn McFarlane, restores the lute to its former glory – but in a modern context. With backgrounds in rock, folk and jazz, the members of Ayreheart bring fresh energy to old traditions. Renaissance meets traditional roots meets contemporary folk, this is lute-driven music for modern folk, in a unique blend of lute with vocals, colascione (a kind of bass lute), violin, guitar and percussion.

Ronn McFarlane, Lute
GRAMMY-nominated lutenist Ronn McFarlane strives to bring the lute, the most popular instrument of the Renaissance, into today’s musical mainstream, making it accessible to a wider audience. Ronn is reinventing the lute for the twenty-first century, writing new lute music and performing in both traditional and non-traditional venues throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Ronn builds on the tradition of lutenist-composers of past centuries and creates music in a modern context. His original music combines elements of Celtic, Americana, and traditional folk music dating back to the Renaissance. With over 40 recordings to date, Ronn has an exciting catalog of both traditional and original music. His original compositions are the focus of his solo CD, Indigo Road, which received a GRAMMY Award Nomination in 2009. Ronn’s newest solo album, The Celtic Lute, released in 2018, features his arrangements of traditional Scottish and Irish music from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Learn more at https://ronnmcfarlane.com
Heather Aubrey Lloyd, Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
​Heather Aubrey Lloyd has travelled for two decades, playing anywhere that might make a good story. Her love of the journey evolved into equally adventurous songwriting. Pat Wictor hails her “sing-me-the-phone-book” voice. “Janis Joplin meets Joni Mitchell,” says the Montgomery Caller. Comfortable in any genre, Lloyd blends folky finger-picked guitar with lyrical rhythms/hand percussion influenced by Baltimore’s diverse music scene.

Best known as co-front of ilyAIMY (“I love you, and I miss you”), Lloyd's solo efforts are gaining recognition: Falcon Ridge Folk Fest Most Wanted, National Women’s Music Fest Emerging Artist, No Depression-FreshGrass Finalist, and Top 4 Telluride Troubadour. She is also the 2019 Grand Prize Winner of the prestigious Bernard Ebb Songwriting Award. 2025 finds her back on her beloved road and releasing her second studio album, Panic Room With A View.
Willard Morris, colascione, electric bass, violin​
Will Morris provides the foundational base of Ayreheart, on both the fretless electric bass and the colascione, the bass of the lute family. But in a whiplash-inducing change of instruments, he picks up the violin and takes on the high lyric role, as well as a grinding double-stop drive for some Celtic flavored songs. Early music came late in life for him, having studied music composition and arranging with an emphasis in jazz, he’d never imagined performing renaissance repertoire. And enjoy, he does, as the group allows him to bring both the elegance of jazz and classical music sensibilities coupled with the fire of funk and rock.
Mattias Rucht, percussion
​Mattias Rucht has been immersed in music his entire life. His father was a symphony conductor and his mother was a pianist. His first playground was in the midst of the orchestra and behind the stage. He started playing the drum-set at the age of twelve and began playing in southern rock bands at the age of fifteen. By college, he had advanced to jazz fusion. Mattias has been involved in multimedia development for many years.

Mattias has composed music for animation, games, film and video and has had a computer based studio since 1984. At one point, all the instruments that he used were MIDI and electronic. Around 2002, Mattias started listening to some of the masters of world percussion and what they were doing with acoustic instruments. A simple tambourine or djembe could be more expressive than a rack of electronic instruments. This sparked his interest in world percussion and getting back to basics. Since then, he has discovered the joy of ethnic percussion and world music, bringing a wide range of influences to his playing style.

For more than 25 years, Mattias Rucht has been active in the Washington, DC, music scene as a drummer/percussionist, playing in various rock, jazz, folk and world ensembles. He has also performed in theatrical productions and accompanied dancers and storytellers.

TICKETS TO PURCHASE
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