Darol Anger

Violinist, fiddler, composer, producer, and educator, Darol Anger is at home in a number of musical genres, some of which he helped to invent. With the jazz-oriented Turtle Island String Quartet, Anger developed and popularized new techniques for playing contemporary music styles on string instruments. The virtuosic "Chambergrass" groups The Darol Anger Fiddle Ensemble, Psychograss, and the long-lived Anger-Marshall Duo currently feature his compositions and arrangements. His Grammy-nominated folk-jazz group Montreux was the original musical model for the New Adult Contemporary radio format. The David Grisman Quintet forged a new genre of acoustic string band music with Darol's "fertile inventiveness, surprising touches and technical mastery" (Boston Herald) often in the forefront.

Working with some of the world's great improvising string musicians, among them Stephane Grappelli, Mark O'Connor, David Grisman, Tony Rice, Béla Fleck and Vassar Clements, has contributed to the development of Anger's signature voice, both as a player and a composer. His published works include jazz originals and arrangements, as well as a collection of fiddle tunes composed straight from the heart of the traditional music idiom.

Anger has produced dozens of critically lauded recordings since 1977 which have featured his compositions and performances. Highlights include 2004's much-lauded "Republic Of Strings," by his intergenerational Fiddle Ensemble; "Heritage," a monumental recording which brought together most of the most important voices in the traditional, contemporary folk and bluegrass music scene; the Anger-Marshall Duo's ongoing iconoclastic string of recordings, which set new standards for the Newgrass/jazz genre; collaborations with Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet (the Grammy-nominated "Fiddlers 4"), with banjoist Alison Brown, and the String Cheese Incident's Michael Kang; and his recent release "Diary Of A Fiddler," which sets Anger in duet with the most prominent and innovative fiddlers of our time.

Anger holds the String Chair of the International Association of Jazz Educators. He has led seminars at the Stanford, Oberlin and Amherst Jazz Workshops, regularly teaches at the Berklee School of Music and the Mark O'Connor Fiddle Camp, and at workshops and clinics from Campo Do Jordao, Brazil to the Music Conservatory at Bremen, Germany. He is a Contributing Editor for Strings magazine, and is on the ASTA Editorial Board.

The recipient of a 1995 California Arts Council Composer Fellowship, Anger was nominated in 1997 for the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts. He is a McDowell Fellow and received a Composers' Residency form the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He has been a featured soloist on a number of motion picture soundtracks, and he wrote and performed the score for the Sundance Award-winning film Best Offer. He was the winner of the Frets Magazine Readers' Poll for Best Jazz Violinist for four years running.

Anger's work has expanded not only the acoustic violin's boundaries, but has contributed to the development of violin synthesizer repertoire and technology. His writings on these subjects and various string education issues appear regularly in prominent music periodicals.

Besides his Duo work with Mike Marshall, Anger works with his Republic Of Strings Ensemble, and The Fiddlers 4, with Michael Doucet and Bruce Molsky, and chamber music work and recording with pianist Phillip Aaberg.

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