guitar, at the National Flat Pick Guitar Championship in Winfield, Kansas. After graduating from the Mountlake Terrace High School in 1979, O'Connor joined the David Grisman Quintet as the replacement for guitar player, Tony Rice, and went out on tour with Stephane Grappelli with whom he performed at Carnegie Hall when he was only seventeen-years-old. As a teenager, he was also a member of the seminal instrumental group The Dregs, previously known as Dixie Dregs. At age 19, He won the Buck White International Mandolin Championship in Kerrville, Texas. He is a four-time grand champion (1979, 1980, 1981 and 1984) at the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest in Weiser, Idaho. Several of his teenage albums are noteworthy and inspired a generation of young acoustic musicians, such as "Pickin' In The Wind", "A Texas Jam Session", "Markology" and "False Dawn". Musical career O'Connor composes, arranges, and records American music in genres that include folk, classical, and jazz. His works include concertos, and compositions for orchestra, string quartets, string trios, choral music, solo unaccompanied pieces, folk and bluegrass ensemble and a symphony (see Compositions). After releasing six albums as a teen on Rounder Records, O'Connor signed a long term record deal with Warner Bros. Records in Nashville. He released a series of instrumental albums such as "Elysian Forest" and "On The Mark" as well as teaming up with Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas and Edgar Meyer for "Strength In Numbers". His first award winning albums that catapulted him into the international stage include "New Nashville Cats" and "Heroes" both released on Warner Bros. O'Connor's "Fiddle Concerto (1992)", a violin concerto in American fiddle style commission by the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, has been performed over 250 times, making it one of the most performed concertos written in the last 50 years. The recording of the concerto was conducted by Marin Alsop and "Concordia Orchestra". In 1993, O'Connor teamed up with Charlie Daniels to record a sequel to Daniels' 1979 single "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" entitled "The Devil Comes Back To Georgia". O'Connor and Daniels recorded the song alongside Johnny Cash, Marty Stuart and Travis Tritt. The song was on O'Connor's album, Heroes. Between 1995 and 2000, O'Connor teamed up with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer to release "Appalachia Waltz" and "Appalachian Journey" spending nearly 2 years at the top of the classical music Billboard charts. In 1996, O'Connor