Ayreheart
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Admission Fee: $15 Adults; $10 Students
To Purchased Tickets:
• At the door starting at 6:30 pm (cash and check only)
• Online (credit card) CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE
CDs will be available for purchase at the show. Masks must be worn in building.
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 and make it accessible to a wider audience. He has over 35 recordings on the Dorian/Sono Luminus label, including solo albums, lute duets, flute & lute duets, lute songs, the complete lute music of Vivaldi, a collection of Elizabethan lute music and poetry, and recordings with the Baltimore Consort. Ronn has composed new music for the lute, building on the tradition of the lutenist/composers of past centuries. His original compositions are the focus of his solo CD, Indigo Road, which received a GRAMMY Award Nomination for Best Classical Crossover Album of 2009. In 2010 Ronn founded Ayreheart, an ensemble brought together to perform new compositions as well as early music. Ayreheart’s first CD release, One Morning, consists of all-original music by Ronn McFarlane. Ayreheart’s 2016 release, Barley Moon, blends folk music and art music from Renaissance and Medieval England, Scotland, and Wales. Ronn’s newest solo album, The Celtic Lute, released in 2018, features his stunning arrangements of traditional Scottish and Irish music from the 17th and 18th centuries. 
Willard Morris ~ colascione
When bitten by the classical music bug at 10 years of age, Willard took up the violin as the first in a long line of instruments and it still remains ever close to his heart. It was through the violin that he studied classical music. As a teenager he took up piano, flute, saxophone, mandolin, guitar and learned how to play bass so that he could join the high school jazz band in which great strides of music study and composition developed, all the while keeping active as a classical violinist and earning pocket change as a pit orchestra musician for operas and musicals. Having become enamored with jazz as a teenager, he founded a jazz fusion group. After a decade of hard bass playing Willard gave the bass a rest to relieve stresses on the hands and focus solely on the violin and string quartet composition. During this time he put his electric violin to work in a variety of live performing bands and studio recordings. In 2009 Willard took up the bass again to develop original music with Ronn McFarlane which combined the ancient lute with the modern electric bass, percussion and vocalist which became the group Ayreheart. Recently he has taken on yet another instrument - the colascione, a bass cousin of the lute. |
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. He has composed music for animation, games, film & 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. Mattias Rucht has been active in the Washington DC music scene for over 25 years 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 
Sarah Pillow ~ vocals
Recently praised with having “a genuinely genre-busting voice, full and vivid” (The Washington Post) soprano Sarah Pillow enjoys a unique career, drawing on her equal expertise in jazz, classical, and early music repertoire. Beginning her career as a jazz singer, Sarah won best vocal solo in a performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival. She went on to study classical singing at Oberlin Conservatory, earning a Bachelor of Music degree. Since moving to New York City in the early ‘90s, Sarah has toured the United States and Canada with her jazz quartet, her crossover project, Nuove Musiche, and Galileo's Daughters, her early music ensemble which is shaped by her variety of talents in early music, opera, jazz, drama, and scholarship. Recent dramatic performances include The Play of Daniel, a 12th-century liturgical drama, and two recently composed children’s operas by Norwegian composer Gisle Kverndokk. Her new solo album, Grace in Time, is a collection of spiritual songs for organ and voice with organist Jeffrey C. Johnson. More information can be found at sarahpillow.com and buckyballmusic.com. |
