by Ashmont Media
The following announcement is posted for the Berklee Performance Center:
The 2009/2010 Music Series at Berklee continues with master fiddler and American roots music icon Mark O’Connor, along with Berklee faculty member Matt Glaser, plus student bluegrass groups and a full orchestra on Thursday, Dec. 10, at 8:15 p.m., at the Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Ave., Boston. General admission tickets are $20 – 25, and available at the Berklee Performance Center box office, at Ticketmaster.com or by calling (617) 931-2000. For information, call 617-747-2261 or visit www.berkleebpc.com.
Like other Series artists, O’Connor will spend the week leading up to the concert as artist-in-residence at Berklee. He’ll teach master classes during the day. In the evening, he and Glaser will rehearse top student vocalists and instrumentalists who will perform with the pair at the concert.
O’Connor’s concert introduces Berklee’s new American Roots Music Program, directed by Glaser. Reflecting violinist Glaser’s own eclectic tastes and journeys, the American Roots Music Program explores America’s musical and cultural heritage, and creates a focus on the styles from which contemporary sounds originate. Students will delve into blues, gospel, folk, country, bluegrass, Cajun, Western swing, polka, Tex-Mex, and other sounds. Glaser will design the curriculum, promote nontraditional improvisation, develop faculty programs, and host visiting artists, concerts and symposiums. Top contemporary performers, writers, and producers who are carrying on the American roots traditions constitute the board of advisors to the Roots Music Program, including Ricky Skaggs, Bela Fleck, Leo Kottke, Charlie Haden, Edgar Meyer, David Grisman, Lloyd Maines, Liz Carroll, and Doug Wamble.
Called by The Los Angeles Times One of the most talented and imaginative artists working in music — any music – today.” Mark O’Connor is a product of America’s rich aural folk tradition as well as classical and flamenco music. Between these musical extremes, O’Connor has absorbed knowledge and influence from the multitude of musical styles and genres he studied, shaping these influences into a new American classical music, and a vision of an entirely American school of string playing. His first recording for Sony Classical, Appalachia Waltz, was a collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer.
His follow-up release, Appalachian Journey, won a Grammy in 2001. His first full length orchestral score, Fiddle Concerto has become the most-performed modern violin concerto. O’Connor has also formed a piano trio to perform his Johnny Cash-inspired “Poets and Prophets” composition, which he often performs Cash’s daughter, Rosanne. O’Connor has recently formed other ensembles including a String Quartet concert entitled Evening of Strings with chamber music legends Ida Kavafian, Paul Neubauer and Matt Haimovitz, and he recently brought back to the stage his solo recital, a one-man unaccompanied violin concert which features his six caprices and three improvisations as the centerpieces of the tour de force
performance. O’Connor lives in New York.
Matt Glaser has performed with such giants as Yo-Yo Ma, Bob Dylan, Ralph Stanley, Stephane Grappelli, Gunther Schuller and David Grisman. He is also featured on the Grammy-winning soundtrack for Ken Burns’s The Civil War, and served as an advisor for the celebrated documentarian’s Jazz. He lives in Somerville.
About Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music was founded on the revolutionary principle that the best way to prepare students for careers in music was through the study and practice of contemporary music. For more than 60 years, the college has evolved constantly to reflect the state of the art of music and the music business. With over a dozen performance and nonperformance majors, a diverse and talented student body representing over 70 countries, and a music industry “who’s who” of alumni, Berklee is the world’s premier learning lab for the music of today — and tomorrow.
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