Fiddle virtuoso Mark O’Connor has been showing up everywhere of late.

He is on the cover of the September 2009 issue of Strings Magazine, and received a profile in the September 7 edition of The New Yorker’s Talk Of The Town column. Mark also graces the cover of this month’s International Musician, the monthly publication of the American Federation of Musicians.

All these articles focus on O’Connor’s upcoming instructional book series, the aptly-named O’Connor Violin Method, which he describes as follows:

“The music that I have collected for the O’Connor Violin Method includes some of the most endearing melodies in American music as well as some of the great folk fiddle tunes that have endured our 400 year-old history of violin playing. I have made it a specific feature of the Method to include musical literature that represents all of the Americas -Mexico, Canada and every region of the United States ‚Äì and all musical styles ‚Äì classical, folk, Latin, jazz, rock and ragtime. I have chosen and arranged material that will be both instructive and artistically enriching, and will help create the future classical violinist, folk fiddler, jazz musician – or all three!

The Method takes into consideration that, even at the beginning levels, learning music possessing a timeless quality is a healthy vehicle for engendering a lifelong love of music-making. Beginner tunes can be great tunes, and could very well stay with the student for a lifetime of playing and performing. In my own experience giving classes around the country, I often tell students that I have professionally recorded three of the first fiddle tunes I learned as a child. All three -  Soldier’s Joy, Arkansas Traveler, and Fiddler’s Dream, are presented early in this Method. I believe there are no throw-aways. The beginning tunes are built to last, providing a sturdy foundation and core for the novice. The tune that I have arranged to provide the most rudimentary studies for a beginning violinist – Boil’em Cabbage Down – is the first fiddle tune I learned as a child.”

The New Yorker also posted this video of Mark talking about the books.

Rounder is preparing to release a compilation project of John Hartford’s music on September 22.

Entitled, Good’le Days: Essential Recordings, the new CD is part of Rounder’s budget-minded Perfect 10 Series, each of which includes ten tracks from an important Rounder artist. They show the selling price online as $7.99.

How would you like to pick just ten tracks to represent the music of such a legend? Well, here’s what Ken Irwin and Marian Levy came up with…

• Skippin’ in the Mississippi Dew
  
• Gum Tree Canoe
  
• Gentle on My Mind
  
• Lorena
  
• In Tall Buildings
  
• The Vamp from Back in the Goddle Days
  
• Wrong Road Again
• Good Old Electric Washing Machine — circa 1943
  
• Take Me Back to My Mississippi River Home
  
• Old Time River Man

The tracks were taken from recordings Hartford did for the Flying Fish label between 1976 and 1989. They include featured performances from guest artists and frequent Hartford collaborators Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Mark O’Conner, Roy Huskey Jr., Benny Martin, Norman Blake, Vassar Clements and Tut Taylor.

Strings magazine has just released a nice profile piece on fiddler/violinist Mark O’Connor.

The article only briefly covers O’Connor’s past, with the bulk of the content focused on his current and future projects. Among these are his continued involvement with music instruction at the college level, but also the development of a 10 part series of instructional materials entitled the O’Connor Violin Method.

The Suzuki-inspired series will, from the very beginning, expose students to a variety of North American fiddle and violin styles, including such traditional tunes as “Soldier’s Joy,” “Arkansas Traveler,” and “Fiddler’s Dream,” plus a number of O’Connor originals.

This is designed for beginners, even children, but not intended to be easy. If you want it, you’ll have to work for it. The songs are intended to not be “kiddie stuff” but rather tunes the student will want to continue to play after reaching musical maturity. With a focus on improvisation, and the ever changing landscape of American music, O’Connor claims to be a traditionally informed progressive.

I’m trying to build into the classical community, tearing down the divisions and tapping into that history of creativity, imagination, and playing style to amass an American classical music that can be taught to people in schools. That’s one of the reasons I have my string camps. We no longer have back-porch mentoring by grandparents playing the fiddle. This is the first generation of fiddlers who didn’t learn from their grandparents. So we need to figure out how to get this to work inside the classroom.

O’Connor offers many great insights as to why American music is the way it is. Regardless of your interest in the fiddle, if you care about traditional American music forms, you should take a few moments and read this article.

Below is a video of Mark O’Connor’s American String Celebration courtesy of Time.com.

The gala events surrounding the inauguration of our new president are about to get underway, and I’ve just learned that banjoist Bela Fleck and fiddler/violinist Mark O’Connor will take part.

Bela and O’Connor have accepted an invitation to perform with Wynton Marsalis and The Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra in Washington D.C. on 19th January as part of the celebrations surrounding Obama’s inauguration.

The two hour concert, Let Freedom Swing! A Celebration of America, will take place at 7pm the evening of January 19, 2009, in the Eisenhower Theater of the Kennedy Center. Tickets to the event are available by invitation only, but the Kennedy Center website says the event will be televised live. I could find no information concerning broadcast stations though.

The program will be Jazz music and not bluegrass, but Fleck and O’Connor have never let genre define them.

The program will look back on the life of one of the greatest of all Americans, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and forward to a new era under a new President. An all-star cast will illustrate that American democracy and America’s music ‚Äì jazz ‚Äì share the same tenets and embody the same potential for change, hope and renewal, which Dr. King himself called America’s "triumphant music."