Acclaimed fiddler O’Connor returns

Published 2:31 pm Thursday, January 10, 2008

In the 1970s, when most kids were being lured by the siren strum of electric guitars, Mark O’Connor picked up a violin and, at age 11, began studying under Benny Thomasson, a Texas fiddler.

O’Connor, born in Seattle and raised in Mountlake Terrace, was a natural student.

While he’s since left the Pacific Northwest to win a Grammy and half a dozen Country Music Awards, O’Connor returns to his home state this weekend for shows in Seattle and Bellingham.

He intends to wow the hometown crowd.

“I want them to be absolutely entertained, and to go out of the concert hall thinking — believing — that was one of the coolest musical programs they’ve seen all year,” O’Connor, 46, said. “That’s what gets me up and motivates me.”

The fact that O’Connor needs motivation is in itself entertaining — or at least a little amusing. His trajectory has been heavenward for about 25 years, with his abilities propelling him to uncommon heights.

After forays into jazz and rock fusion in his late teens, O’Connor went to Nashville, winning musician of the year six times in a row from the Country Music Association. He expanded his abilities into classical composition, sometimes collaborating with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and country singer Alison Krauss.

Leading critics started lauding him as a “virtuoso,” “imaginative” and “brilliantly original.”

In December, he performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., honoring comedian Steve Martin with a performance of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”

“That was an absolutely fantastic experience,” O’Connor said, noting it was his third appearance at the ceremony. He was something of a natural choice to perform; he sits on the advisory panel for the Kennedy Center Honors, he said.

O’Connor grounds his style in American folk, adding subtle layers to the ache of “Amazing Grace” or crafting his own works, like the Grammy-winning “Appalachian Journey.”

“The tradition of the violin understandably keeps going back to Europe, but I think the American tradition has been significant — and has been here for 300 years,” he said. “And that’s a long time. I want to expose that, and expose that wealth.”

He doesn’t only expose the instrument’s complexities for audiences; he also teaches at the Juilliard School in New York City and at string and fiddle conferences.

The conferences, which he founded, expose him to young talent and have led to live collaborations. His “American String Celebration” shows this weekend are intended to showcase that part of his career.

“It’s a microcosm of one of the conferences,” he said of the shows.

Along with his own compositions — pieces from “Hot Swing!” and “Appalachia Waltz,” for example — O’Connor said the shows will feature the energetic Celtic fiddling of Jeremy Kittel and jazz and classical violinist Sara Caswell.

While he’s looking forward to the shows, he also anticipates his arrival in the Pacific Northwest because the trip gives him a chance to visit his father, an Everett resident.

“I have just a really wonderful homecoming feeling when I come back to Seattle to play,” O’Connor said. “And knowing and looking forward to that has been obviously not only a positive thing, but a really grounding thing.”