Violinist Mark O'Connor to play Tuesday at Bedell

In the American melting pot of music, Mark O'Connor serves as the caldron. He studied Benny Thomasson, who's credited with framing the modern age of American fiddling in the 1940s. O'Connor also learned from French jazz violinist and extraordinary improviser Stephane Grappelli. With this base, he gathered experience and techniques from various musical styles and has crafted his personal style of music to play and compose.

O'Connor partnered with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer for "Appalachia Waltz" on Sony Classical label. His follow-up, "Appalachian Journey," earned him a Grammy Award in 2001, and he has maintained a high level of success ever since. O'Connor not only composes and performs music, he developed a new style of teaching it called the O'Connor Method.

He will play with the Southeast Missouri Symphony Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Bedell Performance Hall. Cellist Patrice Jackson will join O'Connor in his double concerto for violin and cello, "For the Heroes." Tickets for the concert cost $19 and $16 and are available at the River Campus Box office or by calling 651-2265.

SE Live: You have written and published an impressive range of music for orchestra, solo violin, string quartet, and so forth, and your music is an interesting blend of classical and traditional/jazz/folk music. Which classical composers have influenced you as a composer?

Mark O'Connor: I suppose the obvious ones to most are my biggest influences. From the Americans, Gershwin and Copland and from the Europeans, Beethoven and Bartok.

Mark O'Connor

SEL: Could you name one or more artists or traditions in the folk/jazz world that have been important influences on the music you have composed?

O'Connor: Yes, first and foremost my greatest teachers, Texas Style fiddling innovator Benny Thomasson, and jazz improvisational great Stephane Grappelli. There are others, of course, but the most profound influences came from those two gentlemen. Beyond them, every great fiddler I ever heard is most likely a part of me like Vassar Clements, Kenny Baker, Terry Morris, Eck Robertson and Clark Kessinger, and every great jazz violin player, too, like Eddie South, Joe Venuti, Stuff Smith, Claude Williams and Johnny Frigo. All of them have been and will be featured in my O'Connor Method, a series of books dedicated to teach students how to play stringed instruments.

SEL: What compositions are you working on? What sorts of compositions do you have in mind to work on in the coming few years?

O'Connor: I am just completing "Queen Anne's Revenge," which is an orchestral overture about the pirate Blackbeard. This piece was commissioned by the Greensboro Symphony and their 17 Days Festival. I just recently finished my string symphony called "Elevations." That one was a 25-minute ambitious work which really stretched the strings of the orchestra into new vernacular and style in a classical form and framework. I have composed nine concertos to date.

SEL: As a performer, you are a spectacular violinist. Who are some other violinists or performers of any instrument or voice do you admire?

O'Connor: I particularly like Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin and Itzhak Perlman. For contemporaries of mine on other instruments, and musicians I have often worked with, I choose Wynton Marsalis on trumpet, Yo-Yo Ma on cello, Sharon Isbin, Frank Vignola, Julian Lage and Bryan Sutton on guitar and Chris Thile on mandolin. For female vocalists I love Jane Monheit, Renee Fleming and Alison Krauss who are on my new Christmas album, "An Appalachian Christmas."

SEL: You have performed all over America and all over the world. What are one or two performances that you have given that were especially important or meaningful to you at the time?

O'Connor: The greatest experience performing I had was two command performances before two different sitting presidents of the United States, Ronald Reagan and William Jefferson Clinton. Incredible feelings, nothing else like it on the planet for me. Performing for the closing ceremonies of the Olympics was very close to that.

SEL: What artistic activities (performing or composing) are coming up for you in the months ahead?

O'Connor: I have some exciting events coming up this month including Wynton Marsalis' 50th birthday celebration at Jazz at Lincoln Center, a gala performance at Berklee College where they host my string camp in Boston in the summer, and a teacher training seminar in Connecticut for my method books that will feed the new O'Connor Method Summer Camp in Charleston.

SEL: You are very dedicated to the importance of music education, with your violin method and advocacy for the arts in general. Why is music education so important in the lives of young people today?

O'Connor: I have spent years authoring the O'Connor Method for violin, viola, cello and string orchestra. It is my opinion that music is natural to the human condition, and natural partner in freedom, democracy and especially in American culture. The violin and fiddle have been central to these ideas since the 1600s. Music builds discipline and inspiration in people's lives. It also strengthens communities, builds faith and saves people's lives, and gives people something to believe in themselves. Participation, communication, listening and responding responsibly is at the heart of music making, and this is all a foundational experience we all should be a part of.

SEL: What hobbies do you have outside the music world?

O'Connor: I enjoy my two children tremendously. Whatever they are into end up being my hobbies!