STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Chop!

Twenty-two sixth-graders in Wood River Middle School’s strings program brought down their bows on the strings of their violins and cellos with the intensity of a martial arts fighter making a knifehand strike. Then they drew their bows downward across theirs strings.

Chop!

The students gave their strings another controlled whack, this time drawing their bows upwards

As they settled into a rhythm, acclaimed fiddler Mark O’Connor began playing “Boil Them Cabbage Down” on his fiddle and soon the orchestra students were absorbed in their spontaneous performance.

“You can play a piece straight through as it’s written or you can veer off the page and try something different,” O’Connor told the students.  “The idea is you’re having fun with it. Music gives you license to be creative where nobody gets hurt in the end. There is no right or wrong—nobody can say something should be a certain key. You can try something and see if you like it.

The Grammy Award-winning Mark O’Connor Band played to a sell-out crowd as part of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts’ Winter Concert Series on Sunday at the Sun Valley Opera House. Come Monday morning,  the 56-year-old fiddler and his wife Maggie O’Connor spent an hour teaching the WRMS strings class as part of The Center’s school enrichment program.

Teacher Rebecca Martin recounted for the students how she had been a student herself when her grandmother took her and four other violin students to see O’Connor perform in Twin Falls in 1988.

O’Connor was cool, she recalled, because he rode a skateboard in addition to playing a violin. And he was gracious, as well, offering to meet with her grandmother’s students the next morning.

O’Connor related that he had started his musical career playing guitar at age 6. He took up the fiddle at 11 and soon was named National Junior Fiddling Champion two years later in 1974 at the National Oldtime Fiddlers Contest in Weiser, Idaho.

“When I first entered, there were only three kids out of 300 contestants. Now it’s wonderful to see so many youngsters playing,” he said.

O’Connor recounted how he refused to play his violin at school, even though the teachers wanted him to because he was the only boy who had a violin.

“Now, the same kids who made fun of me follow me on Facebook,” he said.

O’Connor added that his son was born the same year Martin saw him perform and that he named his son Forest after the “Elysian Forest” album that Martin’s grandmother bought at the concert.

“He’s 29 now and he played in our band last night,” he said.

O’Connor achieved national attention for his fiddling, but he is now considered one of the most imaginative artists working in music. He’s worked with such diverse artists as folk fiddler Benny Thomasson, French jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli and classical violin legends Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman. And he weaves through a kaleidoscope of musical genres from bluegrass to the blues.

He created a new American Classical Music and a vision of American school of string playing embodied in his O’Connor Method 10-book music instruction books.

And he drew from all of this on Monday to show the youngsters how they could deviate from what was on the written score.

He showed them how to make their violins sound like electric guitars. He played a variety of tempos, from 6/8 to 3/4. He taught them how to pluck. And he showed them how raising the pitch gave new expression, with high notes  generally being fast and playful and low notes slower, bigger, bolder.

O’Connor showed the kids how to slide their finger a half step, giving their music a “Jaws” theme-like feel. He then played “Florida Blues,” using the technique.

“Isn’t that a cool thing? That song is over 100 years. I used to play that in contests as a little kid, and the old-timers would come along and say ‘Where did that kid learn the blues like that!?’ ”

Another signature style of American music is ragtime which involves swinging notes, O’Connor said.

He demonstrated with the “Dill Pickle Rag,” rolling his bow as he played.

“When you come together, you have to figure out how to play together,” he told the kids. “It’s about listening to our neighbor, connecting with our neighbor. Music is a community and there are so many way to relate to each other to play.”

He played a strain of “Amazing Grace” that he’d altered from the time-honored tune. But when he asked the kids to follow suit, they played the traditional refrain.

“Now close your eyes, and hear, feel the music in the room,” he said. As they did, some of the students began playing what they’d heard him play.

“It’s fun to see him in action with the O’Connor Method,” said The Center’s director of performing arts Kristine Bretall, who arranged the workshop. “It shows the kids what they can do beyond the classical repertoire.”

Following class O’Connor told Martin that she had something special going here.

“We do and I keep telling the kids that,” she replied. “For me, it’s a complete full circle. I never thought I would be teaching, yet alone come back to Idaho. But this place is unique. And I was drawn to the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, the Sun Valley Summer symphony and this area’s love for the arts.”

O’Connor said he has talked to symphony’s musical director Alasdair Neale about performing with the symphony.

“He says he wants me to come--we just have to make it happen. I want to come. And, perhaps, I could do a residency, hang out, teach the kids stuff. Teachers, too.”

“Well,” laughed Martin, “That would just be me!”