2015
Duo.
Mark and Maggie
The story of Mark and Maggie - the charming, talented, successful American fiddler and composer and the young, strikingly beautiful violinist with the fastest fingers in the West. They fell in love after playing violin together at a New York City gala in the Spring of 2014. They married shortly after and have been inseparable since. They were drawn to each other by their love of American string styles and how well they could play Mark’s own violin duo pieces together. They loved traveling and performing, so it was a match made in heaven. Initially there were no plans to record an album, but in their travels, a concert hall became available to record and a duo was put on tape, and then another, and so on. Within a couple of months, fourteen duos were recorded.
The results are remarkable. At times in this recording it is hard to tell the two violinists apart. They are able to reach such closeness, intuitiveness and duo perfection by listening carefully to each other, responding to the emotional contents of the material and loving these American styles of music. Audiences everywhere have been entirely engaged with the quality of these musical arrangements as well as the couple's lively performances on stage and in their videos. The easy interaction and playfulness they have with each other is both enchanting and entertaining. The chemistry can certainly be heard on this recording as well as be seen on several companion videos created for this project. Perhaps being a married couple did add to the magic of these sessions? Regardless, the storybook violin collaboration and this singular album captivates one's attention to the two violins, and that is what they both wished for. Performing new arrangements of great American classics, we introduce you to Mark and Maggie O'Connor!
About the O’Connor Violin Duos
For violinists there is the “Bible,” and that is J. S. Bach’s solo violin repertoire: the Bach Partitas and Sonatas for solo violin. For us Hungarian violinists, there is another essential and indispensable collection: Béla Bartók’s 44 Violin Duos. As he often expressed, Bartók regarded not only the Hungarian, but also the Romanian and Slovak folk music as the source of his composing mastery. He used original folk material of these nations alongside his original themes in creating his famous Duos. He wanted to place this invaluable treasure in the hands of young violinists, giving them the opportunity to play them together as it happened in real life in the villages all around Hungary.
Mark O’Connor's Duos also send the important message that there is a rich and exciting world that is worth being known widely, and this is the American fiddling, the American folk music with its different styles and moods, and what violinists should learn through playing them together, exactly as playing the Bartók Duos. The roots of Mark O’Connor's compositions are in the traditional American fiddling styles, and I am sure his unique and excellent settings will serve the same goal that Bartók’s Duos serve. Being a concert violinist and university violin pedagogue, I welcome the birth of these fantastic O’Connor Duos and wish great success for them!
Péter Kováts
Bartók-Pásztory Award winner violinist
Hungary
Music Videos
Watch Music Videos from Mark and Maggie’s first project together!
Rave Reviews for “Duo” by Mark and Maggie O’Connor
Deep Roots
"Standing toe-to-toe with Mark O’Connor at the altar is one thing; doing it when he has a fiddle in his hands quite another. Maggie has been impressing critics and fans alike for some time now but working with her new husband, and appearing with him on this album, is going to vault her into the front ranks of American violinists. As a technician and as an expressive player, she is formidable, has it all. What I find so special about her, apart from the sheer soulfulness abundant in the music she makes, is her uncanny sense of playing off of and with Mark, knowing when to assert herself and when to be empathetic and supportive.
For Mark, "Duo" continues his remarkable mid-career reinvention as a classical artist and composer and furthers his case and cause for a new American Classical string music repertoire. Even in a time standout violinists are in abundance, O’Connor cuts a singular figure with his mastery of so many roots music styles to complement his ongoing education in classical music. His long-time fans will recognize most of the songs on Duo; they’ve been part of his life and work for some time. A few of them appeared on the abovementioned Heroes long player; the spirited “Emily’s Reel,” a splendid showcase of Mark’s fluid rhythmic sense and beautiful tone, was featured on the Grammy winning An Appalachian Journey album, featuring Mark, Yo-Yo Ma (Mark wrote the piece for Yo-Yo’s then-10-year-old violin playing daughter) and Edgar Meyer; others come from favorite O’Connor sources, such as Johnny Gimble (see “Fiddlin’ Around,” above); Bob Wills, remembered in Mark and Maggie’s heartfelt twin fiddling on “Faded Love,” a song occupying a special place in Mark lore: in 1974, when as a lad he made his Grand Ole Opry debut, he encored with “Faded Love,” including his own third verse variation on the original, which he includes here as well; and not least of all, the legendary Stephane Grappelli (“my last real violin teacher,” as Mark writes) via a red-hot set-to with Maggie on “Tiger Rag,” a rousing romp based on the version Mark originally arranged and recorded as a violin and trumpet duet with Wynton Marsalis.
These duos serve another purpose beyond introducing the Mark and Maggie collaboration. They are found in the advanced level of Book IV and V of Mark’s O’Connor Method, a groundbreaking American Classical approach to modern violin playing that is fast supplanting the Suzuki method and introducing students to a technical foundation using all American music. What happens here is best summarized in liner notes by the Bartók-Pásztory award winning violinist from Hungary, Péter Kováts, who observes: “Mark O’Connor’s Duos also send the important message that there is a rich and exciting world that is worth being known widely, and this is the American fiddling, the American folk music with its different styles and moods, and what violinists should learn through playing them together, exactly as playing the Bartók Duos...There is also an overriding truth relating to the O’Connors’ Duo debut: It starts with the heart. This couple ain’t just fiddlin’ around." –Deep Roots http://deeprootsmag.org/2015/07/12/it-starts-with-the-heart/
Strings Magazine
“Mark and Maggie O'Connor recently appeared at the Lockenhaus Kammermusikfest in Austria this past July to perform amungst world class string players at the festival. Strings Magazine writer Laurence Vittes was in the audience and wrote the following review from the performance, "The evening's numerous high points included Mark and Maggie O'Connor spinning out 10 cuts from their brand-new, self-produced CD "Duo"...Although the O'Connor's duets, including rags, reels and hornpipes, and ranging from the Louisiana Cajun "Jole Blon" to the gospel tune "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and the jazz standard "St. Louis Blues," raises inevitable comparisons with Bartok's 44 Duos, O'Connor in his music and his enormously ambitious series of The O'Connor Method: A New American School of String Playing, based on American fiddling, recently reaching Volume Five, has embarked on something different, more extended, and occasionally even incorporating singing (Maggie O'Connor at one point sounding like a folksinging star in the making); in one particular, however, O'Connor's Duos are not only fully comparable to the Bartok Duos but exceed them in O'Connor's determination and easy ability to make what might be broadly considered pedagogical tools, serve as legitimate musical pieces, each with its own attractions.
There was no dichotomy between entertainment and pedagogy at the concert, where you could feel that an obviously respectful, courageously curious Lockenhaus audience might soon be clapping and even dancing in the aisles. One the new CD, by contrast, it is the staggering skill of the part writing and voicing that takes center stage.
While embedding fiddling sets within a nominally classical music program fits into O'Connor's mindset about what North American classical music needs to do to authentically and fully embrace its folk heritage, as European composers have done for centuries, it is not clear whether the restraints of classical music conventions in a concert setting allows this music to make its full impact.
On the other hand, learning a string instrument using the O'Connor method might prepare aspiring young violinists for actually making a living, as opposed to learning at the feet of specialists like Jordi Savall or the Kuijkens, to which O'Connor's numerous Grammy awards and the already iconic status of his "Appalachia Waltz" attest. In other words, mothers you can finally let your babies grow up to be fiddlers." Strings Magazine http://allthingsstringscommunity.com/profiles/blogs/mothers-you-can-finally-let-your-babies-grow-up-to-be-fiddlers
iTunes
"O'Connor offers his own two-violin arrangements, quite dense and sophisticated, of mostly American popular tunes. Many come from O'Connor's base in country, bluegrass music, and he shifts styles adeptly among the roots fiddle sounds in these genres, producing an acceptably Cajun "Jole Blon" (track six), for example, or a lovely version of the Western swing fiddle classic "Faded Love." But there are also a few jazz pieces, some originals, and the nostalgic folk classic "Ashokan Farewell." Part of the charm of the program is the nature of the arrangements, reminiscent of Renaissance bicinia, with a teacher and student part that gradually converge in virtuosity." –iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/duo./id1012726542
CDHOTLIST
“Fiddle legend Mark O’Connor and his wife Maggie have created a lovely album that doubles as a master class in arrangement and a pure listening experience of the highest quality. They’ve taken an assortment of familiar tunes from a variety of American traditions including bluegrass (“Gold Rush,” “Jerusalem Ridge”), Cajun (“Jolie Blon'”), traditional jazz (“Tiger Rag”), and country (“Faded Love”) and created unaccompanied twin-fiddle arrangements for them that are sometimes elegantly sophisticated and sometimes barn-burningly straightforward, but always either moving or exciting. Their playing is offhandedly virtuosic, but they never succumb to the temptation to show off their chops for selfish reasons.”
