“For audiences and aspiring young musicians, hearing a completely improvised concerto is a unique and inspiring opportunity. It is a wonderful concept brilliantly executed by the gifted Mark O'Connor.”  -Marin Alsop (Conductor, Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra)

"It's utterly groundbreaking…a concerto like this is totally unplayable by the vast majority of conservatory grads.”  -Paul Haas (Conductor/Composer, Music Director of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, founder/Artistic Director of Sympho)

"Mark O'Connor's  'The Improvised Violin Concerto' is a innovative way to approach the musical interaction between soloist and orchestra. It also requires a new set of skills that will encourage young virtuosos to develop high level improvisational skills.  The string world welcomes this addition to the repertoire that supports one of our national standards for music education, improvisation." -Bob Phillips - President, American String Teachers Association

"'Americana Symphony' may well be regarded one day as one of this country's great gifts to the classical music canon, as well as being a pivotal moment in the rise of the new American classical music." - David McGee (Spin, Rolling Stone)

"a monumental work...inevitably will be compared to Copland." - Associated Press

"as unrepentantly tonal, accessibly melodic and sonically spacious as a great Elmer Bernstein film score." - Los Angeles Times

"Mark O'Connor provides his answer to a question that has intrigued U. S. composers since the debut of Dvorak's New World Symphony in 1892: 'How do you write the great American Symphony?'" - David Wallace, Berklee College of Music, Juilliard School