Mark O'Connor's An Appalachian Christmas featuring Maggie O'Connor

Featuring songs from their upcoming new album “A Christmas Duet,” Grammy Award winning Americana, bluegrass, classical and jazz artists Mark and Maggie O’Connor bring their annual holiday tour “An Appalachian Christmas” to the Carolina Theatre for the first time.

A three-time Grammy winner, Mark O’Connor is a legendary musician well-known for his instrumental virtuosity as well has his American classical compositions for Yo-Yo Ma and symphony orchestras. His wife, Maggie, a talented violinist in her own right who earned her Grammy by playing bluegrass with the O’Connor Band, plays fiddle and sings lead, while Mark adds harmonies and plays fiddle,  guitar, mandolin and mandocello.

Mark O’Connor’s “An Appalachian Christmas” album (2011) reached the #1 ranking on Billboard’s Bluegrass Album charts. Hailed by critics from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times as a top 10 album of the holiday season, it has become a perennial classic Christmas recording. 

“A Christmas Duet” will be released this fall on OMAC Records, and the O’Connors have compiled a new set list of Christmas songs that distinguish themselves from the perennial album they tour each year and celebrate. This set of reimagined holiday classics compliment the duo setting and includes:

1) Silent Night 

2) Christmas Time’s a Comin’

3) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

4) Hark! The Angels Sing

5) Hold That Tiger Rudolph

6) It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

7) Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring / F.C.’s Jig

8) The Cherry Tree Carol

9) Carol of the Gypsy Bells

10) The First Noel

11) The Holly and the Ivy

12) What Child Is This? 

13) It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas