Award Winning Musician Mark O’Connor to Host O’Connor Method String Camp
Once a year, Mark O’Connor brings strangers together to share in a love for string playing. The violin/fiddle and strings camp is open to individuals of all ages and all skill levels. Whether you are interested in engaging in a new art or brushing up old talent, this violin camp is for you. Campers will engage in a creative, culturally diverse, improvisation experience through the form of timeless American music.
What: O’Connor Method String Camp
When: July 29 – August 2, 2019
Where: Charlotte, NC
Registration: www.oconnormethodstringcamp.com/register
“This month features our 2nd string camp in Charlotte and the 9th annual O’Connor Method Camp overall, having hosted them in New York City and Boston prior to Charlotte. It is my 25th annual string camp I have directed, starting them as “Fiddle Camps” in Nashville in 1994. Nearly 8,000 students have graced these string camps, and tens of thousands of students are currently learning from the O’Connor Method books. I hold teacher-training seminars at the camp and teachers around the world have been certified under my supervision in the Method. It is great to see how we can inspire students and especially kids through American music with its inherent creativity and improvisation along with its beautiful and powerful literature composed by people of all races and ethnicities. We should not only be learning music of dead-white composers. The celebration of diversity in my violin method materials, having large portions of music by African American and Hispanic composers as well as European Americans and more, is the right message for string students and the right message for our time. Glad to have it happen right now, especially so. Public Schools should include American string playing in their curriculum because it is inclusive of African American, Hispanic, Native American and other cultural music, while European classical music and previous methods for violin, leave it out. Enter the O’Connor Method for violin in the 21st century!” – Mark O’Connor
A long-standing tradition of Mr. O’Connor’s camps are the Daniel Pearl instrument awards. The slain Wall Street Journal writer, Daniel Pearl, was killed in the Iraq War. Daniel was a fan of Mark’s and also played the violin. His family has overseen the commission of several $20,000 – $30,000 stringed instruments in Daniel’s name and they have been rotating through the O’Connor student body each year, deserving students voted on by the camp’s faculty with the message that music can fight against hatred.
About the O’Connor Method:
The camp offers musical instruction for violin, viola, cello, double bass, and orchestra based on the O’Connor Method. Mark O’Connor has been perfecting this approach which employs, “classic violin technique and theory, combined with American music, history, creativity and improvisation” for years.
O’Connor’s mission is to enrich people of all age’s lives with the beauty of music, in hopes that they will become “bold, imaginative and creative individuals in stringed instruments.” Interested participants can find out more information about the camp and register at www.oconnormethodstringcamp.com.
About Mark O’Connor:
At age 13, Mark O’Connor was the youngest person ever to win the Grand Master Fiddler Championships competing against all ages, amateur and professional. Forty years later, his record still stands.
At age 17 Mr. O’Connor played guitar as a member of one of the greatest acoustic string bands of the 1970s, the David Grisman Quintet. At age 19 he played violin and guitar alongside Steve Morse as a member of one of the greatest rock-fusion instrumental bands of the 1980s, The Dregs. In his twenties he was a member of Strength in Numbers (with Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas and Edgar Meyer). During his twenties, Mr. O’Connor became the most in demand session musician of any instrument and in any genre for a 3-year period, appearing on more top ten hits in the country, recording over 500 albums, and recording with everyone – Dolly Parton, James Taylor, Doc Watson, Paul Simon, Wytnon Marsalis, John Williams, Randy Travis, Earl Scruggs… The list is too long to print.
After recording a series of albums for Rounder and Warner Bros including his multiple Grammy-winning New Nashville Cats, his recordings for Sony Classical with Yo-Yo Ma, Appalachia Waltz and Appalachian Journey sold a million CDs and gained O’Connor worldwide recognition as a leading proponent of a new American musical idiom. Mr. O’Connor’s Fiddle Concerto released on Warner Bros. has become the most-performed violin concerto composed in the last 50 years.
Now, at age 57, he has melded these influences into a new American classical music, and is perpetuating his vision of a New American School of String Playing. In addition to his stellar performance career, Mark has authored a series of educational books called the O’Connor Method and is now the fastest growing violin method in the country. Mr. O’Connor continues to perform as guest with symphony orchestra and tours nationally with his wife Maggie O’Connor as a duo, and with the newly Grammy-winning Mark O’Connor Band featuring more of his family members.
This year Mr. O’Connor is celebrating his 45th anniversary as a solo recording artist having released 45 feature albums since 1974. Mark currently releases albums on his own indy label OMAC Records and is represented in North America by New Frontier Touring, Nashville, TN.
For more information visit Mark’s website, www.markoconnor.com and www.oconnormethod.com.
