Mark O'Connor: Method Man

Unlike Bart Simpson, Mark O’Connor is an overachiever, and proud of it, though in a soft-spoken, disarmingly modest way. The Seattle-born, protean superfiddler, composer, music educator, and inventor of “The O’Connor Violin Method,” which has helped school countless budding violinists, is heading to the Bay Area this month, for a performance with the New Century Chamber Orchestra, which has designated him as its featured composer (he returns with a new work in May). It marks a renewed collaboration with NNCO Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, with whom he previously recorded an inspired version of his 2008 Double Violin Concerto for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. SFCV caught up with O’Connor in a telephone interview in midtown Manhattan during a brief break from his whirlwind schedule.

In the liner notes to the Double Violin Concerto, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg said she was “at a loss as to how I could work my strict classical education and knowledge into Mark’s world.” How did you resolve those issues?

I wanted to bring the qualities that Nadja possesses to the piece so the two parts could really be energized. I have such a unique and identifiable personality though my playing, so I was looking for the classical counterpart to that. The piece is designed for classical musicians. But the [jazzier] sense it includes either comes with experience, access to that music, or having a musical mentor for that, like myself. So I come with the package. ... One of the things I try to do is introduce rhythms that have origins in folk music and traditional American music. In many ways, I’m composing these pieces in such a way that the folk or jazz language itself is so powerfully embedded within the composition that it’s kind of hard to knock it out of there. [Laughs] You’d have to try really hard to ignore it.

And you don’t want to, particularly ...

Right. In many ways, it forces people’s hand. It’s just been really wonderful to share my music with all these amazing musicians — Yo-Yo Ma, Stéphane Grappelli, Nadja, and so many others.

She also said that you’re so nice that “one gets fooled into thinking he doesn’t know nearly as much as he does ... there was never a single moment when he was not in complete control.” How do you balance the competing needs of decency with the requirement to be a taskmaster — a role that is perhaps particularly built into the classical music tradition?

I’ve learned to be a leader through example, not being a dictator. If I was going to play my hand wisely, it would be to try to nurture rather than be too heavy-handed. You want people to meet you halfway, rather than force them to rely on their own training, or skill set. That works if you’re going to interpret Brahms for the 100th time and say, “I want this out of this piece tonight” and everybody’s prepared to find that because of the extensive work they’ve already done on it. But I’m sort of inventing and reinventing, so ... I need participants. That’s what I think she was alluding to. I didn’t see my role as telling her exactly how to play everything. I wanted her to come to it with her own interpretation and spirit.

Does crossover have any meaning, or is it an anachronism, in today’s musical vocabulary?

It had a place in different genres in the past. Obviously, the original crossover was when people crossed over from R&B charts in black music to rock, and then there was country, when people like Patsy Cline crossed over into pop, and a classical crossover period in the ’90s, when there were people that don’t sing opera singing arias and vice versa. But I really come down in a whole different path about all that. I’m a creator of new music all the time. I look at my role as much more of an amalgamation of synthesis. I prefer the word “cross-pollinator.” That’s really a more accurate description of what I’m doing: I’m cross-pollinating the languages of different types of American music to make a third thing, a new thing. But it’s nothing that new. A lot of the great American music that I loved and was trained on was developed through the act of cross-pollinating. Gershwin is a perfect example, cross-pollinating African and American music.

I just have a slightly different take on it. My main emphasis is instrument writing and string writing, so working with the New Century Orchestra is perfect.

Is there a specific Bay Area component that you experience when you come out here? Do you feel that you’re channeling the spirit of Lou Harrison or John Adams?

You know, I lived in San Francisco before John did. [Laughs] I lived there two different times, for a time when I was a child, for several years and then I came back and lived in Marin County when I was playing with the David Grisman Quintet.

What can you tell us about the new work you’ve been commissioned to create for NCCO in May 2011?

I’m actually finished with it. I’m just checking on some of the editing and working on the final parts, but I’ll have it to them right on time. My deadline is the first of the year. The name of the piece is Elevations. It’s in two movements, and will probably be in the 20-minute range. The first movement deals with elements of nature, and the second movement deals with elements of humanity and how the natural habitat and different races and culture come together to create new elevations.

Duke Ellington said that without a deadline he wouldn’t get anything accomplished.

I can relate. Deadlines help you get organized. That’s why I welcome them, even though they can be scary when you fall behind. It provides for more-rigorous periods of concentration, which is probably better for the music in the long run.

Your Web site lists a daunting series of accomplishments, including composing a Fiddle Concerto, which has become the most widely performed violin concerto in the last 40 years; jazz collaborations with Grappelli; and, most recently, Jane Monheit, the “Poets and Prophets” project composition honoring Johnny Cash ... not to mention your education activities and string camps. How on earth do you manage to get all this done? Is there anything such as down time for Mark O’Connor?

Well, I don’t have any down time. I tried it once. I’d accomplished quite a bit, a number of years ago, and had a lot of recordings and pieces under my belt, so I decided to semiretire and move out to San Diego and try the good life for a while. But I found myself really missing being in the middle of everything. I so enjoyed coming to Manhattan about five years ago and realizing that taking it easy is just not a part of my DNA. I grew up dreaming and hoping, with every bone in my body, that I could play music and get out of the neighborhood I grew up in — that school, that house — and I guess that just shaped my view of the world. I just operate full force. I’ve always been good with ideas, and I just wish there were a few more hours in the day sometimes.

How do you sleep? Meditation? Ambien?

One of the things I learned as a creative person is how to turn off the faucet. In my case, sometimes rest is going on the road, believe it or not. I’m probably a bit of a gypsy. For me, I was happiest when I was traveling, ever since I was a child. I was a traveling musician as a 12-year-old. For me, going to the airport and getting on the plane is actually restful. If I wasn’t doing that, I would be slamming it really hard with more creative work.

I’m reading Princeton historian Sean Wilentz’s new book on Bob Dylan, and he describes Aaron Copland’s surprising influence on Dylan. How important was Copland’s work to American music, and your own?

It was huge. Without Copland, I don’t know if I would have had an idea to take my language of music to the orchestra. Obviously, there were other pathways, through prisms like Gershwin and Ives; there are other pathways, but very few, really. When you look at the history of music in America and identify composers able to tap into the language of popular musical culture, not that many were able to do it successfully. Copland; Ives; Bernstein with African, Cuban music, and jazz. Actually, Dvořák; a lot of people say his music was Bohemian, but I love the fact that he just jumped in and helped people like me understand the importance, not only of melodic themes, but the idea that there can be an American classical music.

Is the “O’Connor Method” a conscious rebellion against [the] Suzuki [Method]?

It’s a little full circle, coming back to when we were talking about whether you should be a taskmaster or ask people to come towards you. I ask children, and parents, to become more involved in the music in a way that’s not mechanical or disciplinary. There’s been some amazing cultural history that gives us richness that puts us on par with some of the great musical systems of the world. For a long time, a lot of us in America discounted our own musical development, because we’re such a new country. But if you take another look at it, it’s been 400 years since the violin came to America. And as soon as it came here, it became an American instrument, played by European-Americans, African-Americans, Native Americans, almost immediately, all through the South, which is where our cultural language comes from — blues, gospel, ragtime, hoedown, and rock.

Boil ’Em Cabbage was one of the first tunes that stuck with you. And you also include Soldier’s Joy and Arkansas Traveler. They’re also key to the Method. Is this purely musical, or is it a way to connect students with our Civil War past?

That would not be the reason to include them. The number one reason I included them is that they had pedagogical value at that point in the lesson. If Soldier’s Joy did not have the right key and the right fingering and the right arpeggios, I would have simply replaced it with another tune. I wanted to pick repertory that withstood the test of time. It wasn’t important to me that Soldier’s Joy was played during the Civil War. It was more important that it’s played today. But, like Amazing Grace, these pieces lasted in the culture because they were so good.

How do you reach new generations who only relate to rap or hip-hop?

Remember, rock, hip-hop, and rap come from the hoedown. We wouldn’t have those music styles without the precursors of fiddle music. If those kids were living a hundred years ago, they would all be into ragtime!

What’s your morning ritual? How do you get started?

I have tea, and don’t eat anything till lunch. I have a real clear beginning of the day when I like to work with only fluids and juices. As the day goes on, I have to at some point get my favorite drink — my only vice left — soy green-tea latte.

You’re 49. How do you plan to celebrate the midcentury mark?

My birthday is usually at some festival or camp I’m doing. Next summer it will be during the first O’Connor Method Camp in Charleston, South Carolina. And my inaugural camp at the Berklee College of Music also starts next June.

Final question: Beatles or Stones?

Wow ... That’s a good one. I’d probably say the Beatles. One of the first images I can remember as a child is when they came over on the plane and did the Ed Sullivan Show. I think I was 3 or 4. As a matter of fact, now I’m on the Artists Committee of the Kennedy Center, and we’ve voted for Paul McCartney. He’ll receive his Kennedy Center Honors next month, and I’ll be there.