Mark and Maggie O’Connor
Mark O’Connor is an astonishingly versatile American instrumentalist and composer who has had exceptional success melding various genres of music—country and bluegrass, jazz, and classical—into his own unique style and voice. Since emerging in the mid-1970s, he has won multiple Grammy Awards, composed nine influential concertos, and appeared on more than 450 albums. In addition to his solo work, he has collaborated with a diverse array of musicians, such as Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Renée Fleming, James Taylor, Chris Thile, Alison Krauss, and Marin Alsop. He also has a playing method program that is widely used by string students.
O’Connor first took classical guitar lessons as a child and taught himself to play flamenco music before beginning fiddle lessons at age 11. Soon he was studying with Benny Thomasson, an icon of American fiddling. In his late teens, O’Connor next became a student of jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli, touring with him as well. O’Connor then worked with Dave Grisman and his Quintet and with Steve Morse of the Dregs. Between 1975 and 1982, O’Connor won competitions as a guitarist, fiddler, and mandolinist. He moved to Nashville in 1983, becoming a session player for many country stars, such as the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Emmylou Harris, and Randy Travis. O’Connor, Edgar Meyer, Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, and Sam Bush formed the band Strength in Numbers in 1986, which played some of O’Connor’s own pieces. His first Grammy Award came in 1991 for his album New Nashville Cats. His music became increasingly sophisticated, utilizing elements of folk, classical, jazz, and world music—what he calls the “four pillars of string playing,” while he absorbed more technical knowledge from artists like Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Yehudi Menuhin, and Pinchas Zukerman.
His first album on Sony Classical, Appalachia Waltz (1996), with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and bassist Edgar Meyer, impressed classical critics with its originality and attractiveness and became a huge crossover hit. The trio’s next album, Appalachian Journey (2000), won O’Connor his second Grammy Award. His Fiddle Concerto, composed in 1993, has been performed around the world hundreds of times. By 2010, he had written another six concertos and the Americana Symphony, recorded by Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony. He recorded his String Quartets No. 2 “Bluegrass” and No. 3 “Old-Time” in 2009 with Ida Kavafian, Paul Neubauer, and Matt Haimovitz. That same year saw the publication of the first book of his
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string teaching method. The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Gloriae Dei Cantores, the Eroica Trio—for whom he wrote Poets and Prophets, inspired by the music of Johnny Cash—and film director Ken Burns are among those who have commissioned new music from O’Connor. The 2001 release Hot Swing!, with Jon Burr and Frank Vignola, was a tribute to Grappelli; the same Hot Swing Trio released Live in New York in 2005. O’Connor had Renée Fleming, Alison Krauss, and James Taylor among his guests for An Appalachian Christmas (2011), which also became an annual touring show. In 2015, O’Connor and his wife Maggie released their first album together, Duo. In late 2015, Mark introduced the O’Connor Band, a contemporary bluegrass project in which he was joined by wife Maggie, son Forrest O’Connor, and daughter-in-law Kate Lee. The group released its Grammy-winning debut album, Coming Home, in August 2016. In 2021 O’Connor released Markology II, a 42-year sequel to his landmark first solo guitar LP Markology.
Violinist and American fiddler Maggie O’Connor is a Grammy Award–winning musician from her work in the Mark O’Connor Band, and she performs in a duo with her husband, violinist and composer Mark O’Connor. Most recently, they have started a live weekly virtual show titled Mondays with Mark and Maggie, in which the two perform and share stories about their musical experiences and feature special guests that have included Béla Fleck, Rachel Barton Pine, Máiréad Nesbitt, Jonathan Wilson, Xavier Foley, Darrell Scott, and more. With a unique background in both traditional classical violin training and American musical styles, Maggie continues her mission to show that violinists can and should participate in everything the instrument has to offer.
She has regularly performed at the Grand Ole Opry with her husband in both band and duo configurations. In the classical world, her duo with her husband has performed around the globe, including the Leopold Auer Music Academy in Hungary and the Berlin Konzerthaus celebrating the centennial birthday of the legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin. They have appeared with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Walla Walla Symphony, the Nashville Symphony, and many more orchestras performing Mark’s compositions including his Strings and Threads Suite, Double Violin Concerto, and Johnny Appleseed Suite. Along with the Mark O’Connor Band, Maggie has also performed in her husband’s ensembles Hot Swing and American Classics, and in An Appalachian Christmas, a hit concert tour taking place each holiday season.
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Along with performing, Maggie continues to work as co-director with her husband at O’Connor Method String Camps featuring the lesson book series that is rising in popularity each year. Maggie is also a visual artist and jewelry artisan, recently making unique violin peg necklaces to raise funds for scholarships at these camps, providing about 10 scholarships a year for students in need. Her paintings and other artwork are greatly inspired by the intersection of music, nature, and imagination.
Maggie has appeared on multiple recordings both singing and playing violin with the Mark O’Connor Band, ranging from their Grammywinning album Coming Home, to Mark O’Connor Band Live, as well as Zac Brown produced singles In my Blood and Casino. With the group she has performed with the Zac Brown Band in stadiums including Fenway Park to audiences of more than 20,000 people a night, worked with renowned Nashville producer Tony Brown, and recorded with Paul Simon. In addition to performing at the 59th Grammy Awards Ceremony in 2017, the group won for “Best Bluegrass Album of the Year.”
Maggie and her husband’s first recording project together is titled Duo, in which, according to David McGee of Deep Roots Magazine, “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.”
Growing up in a musical family in the suburbs of Atlanta, Maggie started playing the violin at age seven in a family band. Concurrently, she took classical violin lessons with Larisa Morgulis. Playing music with her family band is where Maggie began to develop an ear for arranging, recording, group playing, and improvisation; skills she has embraced throughout her musical life. In her early years, she was a member of numerous bluegrass and rock bands while also being a member and soloist with Atlanta’s top three youth orchestras.
Maggie continued her professional training at the Peabody Institute where she studied with violinist Herbert Greenberg earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in violin performance. She was also a finalist in the Marbury Prize Competition for Undergraduate Violinists while finishing up her bachelor’s degree with distinction. She was accepted into the five-year advanced degree program and was awarded the Career
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Development Grant at Peabody. She was the recipient of full tuition scholarships while studying at the Aspen Music Festival and School for three years. Maggie currently lives in North Carolina with her husband and plays a beautifully handcrafted 1996 violin made by Lukas Wronski and uses D’Addario strings.
William Ransom
Pianist, artistic director, master teacher, editor, and judge for international competitions, William Ransom regularly appears in recital, as soloist with orchestras, and as a chamber musician around the world. He has performed in New York’s Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Town Hall, and Merkin Hall; in orchestra halls in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Atlanta; at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.; and in Philadelphia, Boston, Miami, and Dallas.
Ransom has been invited to perform for the American Ambassadors to Austria, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and Ireland, and his performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio and Television in the United States, Japan, Korea, Argentina, and Poland. His recording of Enoch Arden by Richard Strauss, The Music of Alfredo Barili, Chamber Music of Johannes Brahms, and Listening to Memories with Chopin, Brahms and Bach, were released on the ACA label. Ransom can also be heard on Heartkeys from Rising Star Records.
Ransom commissioned and premiered several major works by composer Stephen Paulus including his Concerto for Piano and Wind Ensemble, and he was also the featured pianist performing music by Dwight Andrews used in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Broadway hit, The Piano Lesson, as well as the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie based on the same play.
A popular performer on many university concert series, he has performed at numerous colleges around the world including Yale, Cornell, Duke, Tulane, Vanderbilt, MIT, Stanford, Toho (Japan), Yonsei (Korea), and the School of the Arts (Argentina) where he has also given master classes.
Born in Boston, Ransom began his musical studies at an early age. He was a scholarship student of William Masselos at the Juilliard School in New York (BM and MM), and he also worked with Theodore Lettvin at the University of Michigan (DMA) and Madame Gaby Casadesus at the Ravel Academy in France.
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Ransom is the Mary L. Emerson Professor of Piano at Emory University and is founder and artistic director of the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta. He collaborates with such artists as cellists Yo-Yo Ma, Steven Isserlis, and Zuill Bailey; clarinetists Richard Stoltzman and David Shifrin; members of the Juilliard, Tokyo, Cleveland, St. Petersburg, American, Ariel, Parker, Vega, Borromeo, Lark, Cavani, and Muir string quartets; violinists William Preucil, Elmar Oliveira, Tim Fain, and Robert McDuffie; guitarist Eliot Fisk; and members of the Empire Brass Quintet, the Eroica Trio, and the percussion group Nexus, among many other classical musicians. He has also worked with jazz great Dave Brubeck and American masters Chris Thile and Mark O’Connor.
In the summers, Ransom is artistic director of the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina and for 10 years was also an artistfaculty member of the Kamisaibara Pianists Camp in Japan. In 2016 he was named artistic director of the Juneau Jazz & Classics Festival and also one of Musical America Worldwide’s “30 Musical Innovators.” Recently, he was named artistic director of the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival.
Emily Daggett Smith
Praised as playing “gorgeously” (Boston Globe) and with “irrepressible élan” (Seattle Times), violinist Emily Daggett Smith has performed across the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. Smith made her New York concerto debut playing the Beethoven Concerto with the Juilliard Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall, and has since performed with orchestras including Iris Orchestra, the Festival Mozaic Orchestra, and the New York Classical Players. She has given solo recitals across the country at venues including the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater and Music in the Loft in Chicago. Smith has performed with renowned musicians including members of the Cleveland, Emerson, and Juilliard string quartets, and her performances have taken place at some of the world’s greatest halls including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Shanghai Grand Theatre, and the Vienna Konzerthaus. As concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra, Smith worked with renowned conductors including Michael TilsonThomas and Leonard Slatkin, and has appeared as guest concertmaster of orchestras including Iris Orchestra, the Orlando Philharmonic, and the Knights. Equally passionate about performing old and new music, Smith has premiered dozens of works, both as a soloist, chamber musician, and as a member of the Knights Chamber Orchestra. In 2021, as part of
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the University at Albany Art Museum’s exhibition WELL/BEING, Smith commissioned two new pieces and performed solo recitals, conducted master classes, and organized a chamber music program with the Knights. Despite her busy performance schedule, Smith is dedicated to teaching and has served on faculty at the Bard Conservatory Pre-College, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Stony Brook University, and the Juilliard School, where she was assistant for Laurie Smukler. Recently she joined the Vega Quartet, in residence at Emory University, as first violin. She has both bachelor’s and master of music degrees from the Juilliard School and a doctor of musical arts degree from Stony Brook University. Her teachers have included Soovin Kim, Philip Setzer, Joel Smirnoff, Laurie Smukler, and Donald Weilerstein. Smith plays on a Johannes Cuypers violin, generously donated by Marylou Witz.
Jessica Shuang Wu
As a founding member of the Vega Quartet, Jessica Shuang Wu has performed extensively throughout North America, Asia, and Europe and has been broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today, Radio France, the National Radio of China, the National Radio of the Czech Republic, and Shanghai TV. Her concert appearances include the Vega Quartet’s critically acclaimed Lincoln Center debut and “a triumphant L.A. debut” (Los Angeles Times); performances at the Weill and Zankel Recital Halls, and Issac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall; Harvard Club in New York; Museum d’Orsay of Paris; Highlands-Cashiers Festival in North Carolina; Aspen Music festival; La Jolla Concert Series, and many others.
Born in Shanghai, China, Wu made her solo debut with the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra at age 12. At age nine, she joined the Shanghai Conservatory and started playing chamber music at age 13. In 1998, Wu and the Vega Quartet won the first prize at the Coleman International Chamber Ensemble Competition and first prize at the Carmel International Chamber Music Competition. The following year, the Vega Quartet was awarded four out of a total of six prizes from the 1999 Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition in France, including the International Music Critics’ prize. Wu appears regularly in chamber music concerts with many of today’s leading artists including Richard Stoltzman, William Preucil, Sarah Chang, Robert McDuffie, Charles Wadsworth, Elliot Fisk, and the Eroica Trio.
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