Mark O'Connor (born August 5, 1961) is an American fiddle player and composer whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he has won six Country Music Association Musician Of The Year awards and, was a member of three influential musical ensembles; the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs, and Strength in Numbers. O'Connor has released 45 albums, of mostly original music, over a 45-year career. He has recorded and performed mostly his original American Classical music for decades. An expert at traditionally-based fiddle and bluegrass music, he also plays other instruments proficiently, including the violin, guitar and mandolin. He has appeared on 450 albums, composed nine concertos and has put together groundbreaking ensembles. His mentors have included Benny Thomasson who taught O'Connor to fiddle as a teenager, French jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli with whom O'Connor toured as a teenager, and guitarists Chet Atkins, Doc Watson and Steve Morse. Early life O'Connor was born and raised in the Seattle suburb of Mountlake Terrace, Washington, where his father was a construction worker and his mother was a dance teacher. His mother insisted that he learn to play the guitar at the age of five and, by the age of ten had taught himself to play the Flamenco guitar. As an eight-year-old in 1969, O'Connor watched fiddle player Doug Kershaw perform the song "Diggy Liggy Lo" on The Johnny Cash Show, leaving such an impression on him that he begged his parents to purchase him a fiddle for the next three years before they finally gave him one for his eleventh birthday. In 1973, O'Connor's mother drove him and his little sister from Seattle to Nashville, Tennessee, where a local friend suggested that he might be allowed to play at the Picking Parlour. His performance at the Picking Parlour left the local audience stunned that a twelve-year-old knew so many old-time fiddle songs. A couple of days later, he made his Grand Ole Opry debut, introduced by Roy Acuff, and became the youngest musician to sign a recording contract with Rounder Records. O'Connor won national titles on the fiddle, guitar, and mandolin as a teenager. In 1975, at the age of thirteen, O'Connor won the WSM (AM), Tennessee, and Grand Ole Opry sponsored Grand Masters Fiddle Championships in Nashville, Tennessee, against amateur and professional competitors of all ages. That same year he won another national championship on acoustic