NOT FIDDLING AROUND VIOLINIST MARK O'CONNOR STRINGS TOGETHER REMARKABLE CAREER.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

When you meet Mark O'Connor, you'll notice how the tall Seattle native has eloquent hands with - as you'd expect - long fingers to fly over strings. But as he quietly and deliberately describes his music, listen to how he'll refer to himself as a fiddler one moment and a violinist the next.

That's because O'Connor is both - and more. Through his 30-year career, the 42-year-old has made a career out of not fitting into one musical category and yet making everything fit.

In a review of one of his concerts last year, The New York Times called him the ``only musician today who can reach so deeply first into the refined, then the vernacular, giving his listeners a complex, sophisticated piece of early-21st-century classical music and then knocking them dead with the brown-dirt whine of a Texas fiddle.''

O'Connor will be performing one of the pieces from that concert - ``American Seasons'' - with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday and Thursday. In that composition, which was inspired by Vivaldi's ``Four Seasons,'' you can hear O'Connor's music life swirl, from his years in folk and jazz - as a member of violin legend Stephane Grappelli's band - to being an ace Nashville session man to playing in the classical world.

``I have to include it all because that's my experience,'' explains O'Connor about his writing and playing. ``And I never want to leave anyone out.''

Anyone, meaning early inspirations like roots fiddlers Doug Kershaw and Vassar Clements to his encounters with Grappelli and classical violinists Isaac Stern and Yehudi Menuhin to his work with contemporaries like Joshua Bell, Edgar Meyer and Yo-Yo Ma. ``He's amazing - there is no one like him,'' says Ma. ``I've learned so much from talking to him, watching him, listening to him. He's a very creative person and just an incredible virtuoso. I'm just trying to keep up with all the things that he's doing.''

At times, so is O'Connor: He has just finished with string camp in San Diego, will rush off to London to premiere his ``Sixth Violin Concerto'' on Monday with Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Orchestra - which commissioned the piece - and then head back here. Not to be forgotten are the numerous musical commissions waiting to be written, including some that aren't for violin. One is for piano from the Eroica Trio (odd as that might seem, considering it's a string group), and another is a flute piece for the principal flutist of the New York Philharmonic.

After a hectic year, O'Connor says he expects to have more time to write in the fall. Besides a number of single dates this year plus his two string camps, during the spring O'Connor was on tour for his CD, ``In Full Swing,'' a tribute to the hot jazz style of Grappelli.

But since he brought it up, fall is where O'Connor sees himself - or ``what Shakespeare refers to as maternity.'' It was the Bard, after all, who gave him the inspiration for ``American Seasons.''

When first offered the commission, though, O'Connor turned it down because he felt ``the comparisons to Vivaldi's 'Seasons' would be insurmountable.'' But then one day his cousin, an actor, mentioned Shakespeare's Ages of Man speech from ``As You Like It'' (Act 2, Scene 7) that begins, ``All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.'' O'Connor says he then got the idea that his piece could be about the stages of an American life.

O'Connor worked on bringing an American feel to the work, beginning with the instrumentation - no harpsichord, a guitar instead. Then he brought his various influences. The ``Summer'' movement begins with a loping, sliding fiddle sound that could accompany a scene of kids playing on a tire swing along the Mississippi, but it eventually morphs into the swinging sound of city night life, perhaps New York or Chicago.

It also mirrors O'Connor's own restless late summer. Most musicians would be ecstatic to have accomplished half of what he did at a young age. He began on guitar as a kid before taking up the fiddle and winning contests. But to show you how good he was on the six-string instrument, think about this: Grappelli, who had worked extensively with the legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt, hired O'Connor to play guitar in his group at 17. After finding out he could fiddle, too, Grappelli took him under his wing. O'Connor, who had been a Grappelli fan since he was 13, was thrilled. ``I was able to pick up things from his records, but what I couldn't pick up was how he phrased. What kind of bowing he used.''

Lessons like that served O'Connor well. In 1983, he moved to Nashville, where a couple of years later, he became a hot session man, playing on some 500 albums in about six years. He recorded with everybody - Clint Black, Dolly Parton, Lyle Lovett, Emilylou Harris, James Taylor, Chet Atkins, Randy Travis and Travis Tritt. His sound got so hot that every fiddle player in Nashville began imitating him.

O'Connor says every once in a while he'll be in a restaurant and hear a country song with his sound and try to remember if he was the one playing on the cut or if it was one of his imitators.

Despite his success as a session player, O'Connor had other creative urges. About 12 years ago, he took a leap of faith and embarked on a solo career.

``There are a lot of talented musicians out there with no ideas, no idea what to do,'' says O'Connor. ``But until you have the ultimate conviction of a journey that you set out to do, it's going to be really hard to have a career on your own.''

O'Connor's conviction was to use roots music - Texas and Cajun fiddling, bluegrass, blues and dixieland - in his compositions.

``When I first started bringing roots music to the concerto form, people scoffed,'' he remembers. ``It turned out to be a pretty good idea for me, and now it's led to amazing places,'' including, he says, being embraced by the classical world the way Stern and Menuhin had embraced Grappelli. He also finds it interesting that European orchestras like St. Martin are asking him to write pieces with an American roots sounds.

``Like all of us, he's trying to understand things in a broader concept,'' Ma says of O'Connor.

And being in the autumn of his life - albeit early fall - O'Connor is doing a bit of reflecting of his own.

``It's very peaceful. It's the only stage in one's life where you can look equally back and equally forward,'' he says quietly. ``I look back over my 30 years of music making ... and say, I've got this incredible history and this whole life ahead.''

MARK O'CONNOR

What: O'Connor will play his ``American Seasons'' with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by JoAnn Falletta. The Phil will also perform Vivaldi's ``Four Seasons.''

Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday.

Tickets: $1 to $88. Call [phone] or go to ticketmaster.com.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color) Seattle's Mark O'Connor considers himself both a violinist and a fiddler. He'll play the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday and Thursday.