Mark O'Connor

Mark O'Connor (born August 5, 1961 in Seattle, Washington) is a widely known professional fiddler, prominent in country music and in classical music. As a teenager he won national championships on the guitar, mandolin as well as the fiddle. His mentors were Texas fiddler Benny Thomasson and Jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli. He has recorded solo albums for Rounder, Warner Bros. Records, Sony, and his own CD line OMAC Records.

O'Connor has won two Grammy awards; one for his New Nashville Cats album and another for his Appalachian Journey album he did with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer. He was named Musician of the Year by the Country Music Association six years in a row (from 1991-1996). His collaborative single Restless (with Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs and Steve Wariner) won the 1991 CMA Vocal Event of the Year award.

O'Connor has crossed musical genres, composing, arranging, and recording folk, classical and jazz music. His Fiddle Concerto has received over 200 performances making it one of the most performed concertos written in the last 50 years. He has composed six violin concertos, string quartets, string trios, choral works, solo unaccompanied works and a new Symphony. He has worked and recorded with a wide variety of artists, such as Chet Atkins, James Taylor, Michelle Shocked, Alison Krauss, David Grisman, Tony Rice, Bela Fleck, Renée Fleming, Stéphane Grappelli, Patty Loveless, The Dixie Dregs and Wynton Marsalis. Some of his more recent albums are or contain tributes to his musical mentors and inspirations, including Niccolò Paganini, Benny Thomasson, and Grappelli.

He has contributed music to the PBS Series Liberty! The American Revolution (the companion album is Liberty!). He recorded his "Fanfare For The Volunteer" with the London Philharmonic for Sony Classical, and one of his most critically acclaimed orchestral pieces Americans Seasons for Sony Classical as well. O'Connor recorded a 2 1/2 hour double CD of his music with the mandolinist Chris Thile entitled Thirty-Year Retrospective. It celebrates his thirty years as a recording artist on his own OMAC label. He also provided the soundtrack to a 30-minute animated film on the story of Johnny Appleseed (and released the music on his 1992 album Johnny Appleseed), narrated by Garrison Keillor, He contributed four tracks to a 1993 album on the theme of The Night Before Christmas narrated by Meryl Streep that was recently reissued for Starbucks. One of his most popular compositions, Appalachia Waltz (appearing on the album of the same title), has been adopted by Yo-Yo Ma as part of his live performance repertoire, and used frequently as music for weddings including two of Vice President Al Gore's daughters. O'Connor hosts an annual fiddle camp (the Mark O'Connor Fiddle Camp) in Tennessee and an annual Strings Conference in San Diego, California. O'Connor is currently living in New York City working on new music. One of his recent efforts is his piano trio entitled Poets and Prophets which is inspired by his boyhood hero Johnny Cash. Currently O'Connor and Rosanne Cash have teamed up for concert dates premiering their collaboration in New York at Merkin Hall, January 2007. He plays on Ken Burns' The War.

On April 28, 2009, O'Connor teamed with prominent chamber musicians Kavafian, Neubauer and Haimovitz to present his second and third string quartets, amalgamating bluegrass with classical styles, at Merkin Concert Hall in New York. A recording by the same artists is to be released on O'Connor's OMAC label during May.

Discography

Albums

Year	Album	Chart Positions					Label
Year	Album	US Classical Crossover	US Classical	US Jazz	US Country	US Heat	Label
1974	National Junior Fiddling Champion						Rounder
1975	Pickin' in the Wind
1978	Markology
1979	On the Rampage
1979	Soppin' the Gravy
1982	False Dawn
1982	Industry Standard (with Dixie Dregs)						Arista
1985	Meanings Of						Warner
1986	Stone from Which the Arch Was Made
1988	Elysian Forest
1989	The Championship Years						CMF
1989	On the Mark						Warner
1990	Retrospective						Rounder
1991	The New Nashville Cats				44	14	Warner
1992	Johnny Appleseed						Rabbit Ears
1993	Heroes				46	14	Warner
1993	The Night Before Christmas						Rabbit Ears
1994	The Fiddle Concerto	6					Warner
1996	Appalachia Waltz (with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer)						Sony
1997	Liberty!	8
1998	Midnight on the Water	5
1999	Fanfare for the Volunteer
2000	Appalachian Journey (with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer)
2001	The American Seasons
2001	Hot Swing!						Omac
2003	Thirty-Year Retrospective						Omac
2003	Hot Swing Trio: In Full Swing			4			Sony
2004	Crossing Bridges		19				Omac
2005	Hot Swing Trio: Live in New York
2005	Double Violin Concerto
2006	Folk Mass
2007	The Essential Mark O'Connor						Sony

Singles

Year	Song	Chart Positions		Album
Year	Song	US Country	CAN Country	Album
1991	"Restless" (w/ Vince Gill, Steve Wariner and Ricky Skaggs)	25	19	The New Nashville Cats
1992	"Now It Belongs to You" (w/ Steve Wariner)	71	62	The New Nashville Cats
1994	"The Devil Comes Back to Georgia" (w/ Charlie Daniels, Travis Tritt, Marty Stuart and Johnny Cash)	54		Heroes

Selected Compositions

Appalachia Waltz
F.C.'s Jig
The Fiddle Concerto
Misty Moonlight Waltz
Six Caprices for Solo Violin
Strings and Threads Suite
Vistas
Call Of the Mockingbird
Butterfly's Day Out
Song Of The Liberty Bell
Surrender the Sword
American Seasons (Seasons of an American life)
Fiddler Going Home
Gypsy Fantastic

External links