Chris Wagoner » Viola

Chris Wagoner has been an in-demand multi-instrumental session musician, performer and music educator in the upper Midwest for almost four decades —teaching privately, leading music clinics and currently music instructor and co-director of the Creative Strings Collective at Beloit College. Chris performs as Gaines & Wagoner (vintage jazz, blues and originals) with his wife, Mary Gaines. Past co-founded ensembles ranged from acoustic folk, jazz and classical to blues and rock: Harmonious Wail, Common Faces, Bob Westfall Band, Moon Gypsies, Graminy, La Boheme String Trio and The Stellanovas. Album credits include 10 albums with Carrie Newcomer on Rounder Records, Willy Porter, Peter Mulvey and many others, most notably Smashing Pumpkins’ multi-platinum album, “Gish”.  Chris studied violin performance in Iowa at Central College with Russell Munneke, at Grinnell College with Kenneth Goldsmith (Mirecourt Trio), and at the UW-Madison with Tyrone Grieve with a focus on jazz improvisation and theory with Richard Davis and Joan Wildman. In 2009 he authored “The Hal Leonard Fiddle Method: Book One” which is currently available in music stores in the US and abroad.