A taste from the new Silk Road

 

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 29, 2020

Mark stopped playing guitar and mandoline for 20 years due to bursitis in his shoulder. He came back four years ago. He is also one of the worlds greatest fiddle players so he still had something in his hands to play though. Here he is on a 14 fretter blazing away on a new and very beautiful composition.

A little background on this master: O'Connor was born and raised in Seattle and won national titles on the fiddle, guitar, and mandolin as a teenager. He made his Grand Ole Opry debut at introduced by Roy Acuff, and became the youngest musician to sign a recording contract with Rounder Records In 1975, at thirteen, O'Connor won the WSM (AM), Tennessee, and Grand Ole Opry sponsored Grand Masters Fiddle Championships[5] in Nashville, Tennessee against amateur and professional competitors of all ages. That same year he won another national championship on acoustic guitar, at the National Flat Pick Guitar Championship in Winfield, Kansas.[6] At age 19, O'Connor won the Buck White International Mandolin Championship in Kerrville, Texas. He is a four-time grand champion (1979, 1980, 1981 and 1984) at the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest in Weiser, Idaho.[7] Several of his teenage albums are noteworthy and inspired a generation of young acoustic musicians, such as "Pickin' In The Wind", "A Texas Jam Session", "Markology" and "False Dawn". As a teenager he was in two seminal instrumental groups, the David Grisman Quintet and The Dregs.

 

Streaming pipe organ music from organlive.com.
The pipe organ was the first synthesizer, additive due to the drawbars.
Just donated $10 to them on their site.
Their stream helps keep me afloat in these times.
Don't like to listen to rock or electronic, which I make myself.
Otherwise, I end up sounding like what I listened to.
Hard to do that when listening to baroque or symphonic music.
Or abstract tape/electronic from the 50's-60's.

 

The same Mark O'Connor playing guitar before but now is killing it on violin, as well as he composed this piece, and Chris Thile who is the greatest musician alive is playing mandoline.