submitted by Yavapai College
Three-time Grammy award winner Mark O’Connor performed An Appalachian Christmas in December at the Jim & Linda Lee Performing Arts Center, on Yavapai College’s Prescott Campus.
The show featured O’Connor, alongside his wife and award-winning fiddler Maggie O’Connor, delivering fresh arrangements of Christmas classics — both vocal and instrumental. It featured songs that vividly recalled O’Connor’s life and childhood in Appalachia.
O’Connor, who also has won seven Country Music Association awards, as well as multiple national fiddle, guitar and mandolin titles, is a leading performer and educator in contemporary and classical string music. He began his creative journey at the feet of American fiddling legend Benny Thomasson and iconic French jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli.
As an Appalachian-born violin prodigy, Mark O’Connor used to cherish the Christmas holidays because it gave him a chance to stay home and jam with local musicians, performing traditional Christmas music and folk tunes that celebrated the simple life they all shared.
In his teens, O’Connor performed for President Reagan at the White House. Over time, he melded his diverse influences into a new American classical music, continuing his vision of an American School of String Playing.
“Mark O’Connor’s unfinished trajectory, from largely self-taught fiddle player to concert-hall virtuoso and classical composer, is already one of the most spectacular journeys in recent American music.”
—New York Times
“Mark is so facile with his instrument and so completely on top of it. He’s really one in a million.
We won’t see a lot more like him in this generation.”
—James Taylor
In addition to the holiday concert with the performer whom Vince Gill called, “the best musician on the planet,” the Jim & Linda Lee Performing Arts Center hosted an after-show Dessert Social with Mark and Maggie O’Connor.
