[atlantaprog] Atlanta Ex-Prog Sighting Last Friday Night

Last Friday, April 16 at the Ferst Center of Georgia Tech, Jeff Blanks and I were cruelly and mercilessly slain by the blazing, blinding fingerboarding of Mark O'Connor, his bassist Jon Burr, and his guitarist Frank Vignola (also of the Les Paul band) and their guest singer Jane Monheit.

You might remember that Mark O'Connor was a member of The Dregs for their last album, "Industry Standard," circa 1983, and lived in Atlanta for a time. He was not yet twenty years old at the time.

O'Connor is touring with the above-mentioned Hot Swing Trio, which is an ongoing tribute to Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt. He is also touring with his Appalacian Waltz Trio, which is a classically-oriented violin, viola and cello outfit performing original music, at the same time. He's basically alternating nights in different cities between his two trios. He will be back at Spivey Hall next month to play with the Appalacian Trio.

In addition to his traditional jazz and classical career (he's still writing and premiering concertos and symphony orchestra works), and his perennial returns to old-time fiddle and folk music, he's primarily employed as an educator, with his Mark O'Connor Fiddle Camps around the country training young acoustic string musicians. He's also recently started writing church choral music.

O'Connor has just released a "30-year retrospective" 2-CD set, which celebrates his 30 years as a professional recording artist. He's 42 years old, so do the math.

Truly an amazing guy making some amazing music.

And although we heard him playing completely traditional acoustic jazz on this evening, he's still a virtuoso on a mission to fuse classical orchestral music with an American folk tradition and synthesize something new. I'd say that he's still prog.

Wheat Williams


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