An Evening with Mark & Maggie O’Connor
Mark and Maggie have been existing in an uninterrupted musical collaboration since the day they met eight years ago in 2014. As they were perfecting the finer points of Mark’s American Classical violin duos, it got so good that they decided to get married. The next stage of their musical journey turned into a larger family collaboration for which they each took home a Grammy for playing bluegrass in the O’Connor Band. Now, they have turned yet another musical corner. With a year-and-a-half of isolation from touring during the world-wide pandemic, they dedicated their days and nights towards further musical growth together. The couple workshopped new songs during seventy weekly online concerts from home; Mondays with Mark and Maggie. A group of dedicated viewers watched as they made their musical experiments, some fans tuning in for all of them. What came out of this exploration is an Americana album project of mostly original vocal songs they sing together, other popular songs reimagined, and all of them supported by a small universe of acoustic instruments they’ve brushed up on in the time off the road. The album reveals the pair’s most sincere and deeply personal work yet.
“The album has really turned out beautiful for us,” says the former seven-time CMA Musician Of The Year, an artist who had recently turned 60 but has never shrunk from any musical idea he ever set out to accomplish, from national fiddle, guitar and mandolin championships to the composer of a dozen full scale concertos and symphonies, and, toss in a million sales of his “Appalachia Waltz” played with Yo-Yo Ma. After playing on 450 albums in Nashville during the 1980s, Mark returns here as songwriter, guitar-picker, singer and musical producer, not just the fiddler that changed how Nashville thought of the instrument for the better. The evolution was made possible by the compelling performances, musical talents and encouragement of his wife, Maggie.
