Strung Out

Mark O'Conner stretches the limits of being a violinist.

by ALYSSON COOK

ark O'Conner used to take his violin to the beach, letting the sounds roll and tumble with the wind. This Saturday, the man who has been compared to the 19th-century Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini will be bringing his violin and that beach-playing enthusiasm when he performs with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra at Eudora Auditorium.

Best known for his caprices -- short, dreamlike musical arrangements -- and also his improvisations, O'Conner represents a range of influences -- jazz, country, classical, Celtic sounds. But he doesn't just fiddle around.

"I guess people are pleasantly surprised when they come to my concerts," says O'Conner. "My music is a real funny mixture of feelings. I have always been able to play different types of traditional roots in Southern music very well, very easily. I can sit in with a Dixieland band, an R&B group, or a country band. Maybe it's because of my almost-ancient American past, since my ancestors came over in 1624. I think that affords me the feeling that I'm open to all the different American styles, which are influenced from the world over."

He says people ask him all the time how a boy could grow up in Seattle and feel so at home with Southern music. Perhaps it's because his family is from Memphis. O'Conner's great-grandfather, Jacob S. Galloway, was a probate judge in Memphis in the 1880s and also served on the Tennessee legislature. His grandmother was born here as well.

"I was in Colorado last week and my driver was from Memphis," O'Conner says. "He told me there was a Galloway street and a Galloway golf course. I bet anything that's from my family."

O'Conner got started early with music. At 3-years-old, he had his first guitar and at 5, he started taking formal lessons. At 10, he was playing against college-aged, local Seattle contestants and winning one championship after another. At 11, he switched instruments with a $50 violin.

As for those comparisons to Paganini, O'Conner says, "Paganini really set the standard, and he inspired me to take my music to the people. There's something about him that transcended above just appealing to your own musical colleagues that I really admired. It wasn't just violin players that liked him; ladies would swoon over him and all that stuff. I mean, here's this guy playing all these brilliant pieces and he was able to communicate so well with everyone. That type of connection and communicating in that way is one of my goals."

It seems that O'Conner just might have that communicating thing down. His "Fiddle Concerto" is the most-performed modern violin concerto. He has played with Yo-Yo Ma, Stephane Grappelli, Wynton Marsalis, Vince Gill, Paul Simon, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, and Lyle Lovett, among a myriad of other greats. O'Conner has performed at the White House and Carnegie Hall. He has a Grammy Award and is a six-time Country Music Association "Musician of the Year" recipient. He taught at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University and founded the internationally recognized "Mark O'Conner Fiddle Camp" held twice a year in Montgomery Bell State Park.

O'Conner's newest album, Fanfare for the Volunteer, will contain music that he wrote about Tennessee and which premiered at the Tennessee Bicentennial celebration in 1996. It will also include "The Call of the Mockingbird," "The Trail of Tears" (which depicts the Native Americans being forced out of Tennessee), and "Fanfare for the Volunteer," a musical tribute to the heroes and fighting forces that fought for freedom and liberty all through Tennessee's history.

In addition, O'Conner will also have a cameo role, performing with kids from Harlem, in the new Wes Craven film Music From The Heart, starring Meryl Streep. Then he will perform the release of his newest composition, "Double Concerto for Violin and Fiddle," with the Chicago Symphony and Nadja Solerno-Sonnenberg, a fellow violinist.

"It hasn't always been like this. I've got this burning desire to overcome odds," said O'Conner. "I've always felt I had to prove myself, but now it's like the sky's the limit."

Mark O'Conner

with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, 8 p.m. Saturday, October 9th, Eudora Auditorium, 324-3627