Darol Anger (born 1953) is the fiddler who helped invent new acoustic music. He was a founding member of the David Grisman Quintet in the mid-1970s, co-founded the Turtle Island String Quartet in 1985, and has led or co-led Montreux, Psychograss, Republic of Strings, and Mr Sun. He taught at Berklee College of Music from 2007 to 2018, and the IBMA gave him its Distinguished Achievement Award in 2020.
Why Anger matters
Before Anger, a bluegrass fiddler played breaks and fills. Anger made the fiddle a full member of a string band that could swing, improvise, and hold down rhythm. His work in the Grisman Quintet showed that a fiddle could sit beside a mandolin and guitar in a jazz setting without drums. Most of the young players who chop, improvise, and write their own tunes today trace some of that back to him.
Life and career
Anger was born Darol Robert Anger on May 7, 1953, in San Francisco. He was 21 when he became a founding member of the David Grisman Quintet, whose first album, The David Grisman Quintet, came out in 1977 with Tony Rice on guitar. The band’s mix of bluegrass, jazz, and swing came to be called new acoustic music or Dawg music.
His first record under his own name, Fiddlistics, came out in 1979. In 1982 he and pianist Barbara Higbie made Tideline for Windham Hill, and in 1984 they formed the group Montreux, which lasted until 1990. He also began a long partnership with mandolinist Mike Marshall, and their record The Duo came out in 1983.
In 1985 Anger, David Balakrishnan, and Mark Summer founded the Turtle Island String Quartet. The group played jazz and world music on a classical string quartet, and its early albums came out on Windham Hill starting in 1988. Anger stayed until 1997.
In 1993 he and Marshall founded Psychograss, a bluegrass group with Todd Phillips, Tony Trischka, and David Grier. The band released Psychograss in 1993, Like Minds in 1996, and Now Hear This in 2005. Anger’s solo album Diary of a Fiddler came out on Compass in 1999. In 2002 he joined Michael Doucet, Bruce Molsky, and Rushad Eggleston in Fiddlers 4. He co-founded Republic of Strings with guitarist Scott Nygaard, and the group released Generation Nation in 2007.
Berklee College of Music hired him in 2007, named him an associate professor in 2010, and he taught there until 2018. He has run an online fiddle school at ArtistWorks since 2011. His current band, Mr Sun, with Grant Gordy and Joe K. Walsh, released Extrovert on Compass in 2022 and The Idea Guys in 2025. He and Molsky released Lockdown Breakdown in 2024, and Diary of a Fiddler 2: The Empty Nest came out in 2025. Anger moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Nashville in 2022.
Playing style
Anger’s fiddle sits between bluegrass and jazz. He improvises over chord changes the way a horn player does, but his tone and attack come from fiddle tunes. He also plays rhythm. The chop, a short percussive stroke made by dropping the bow near the frog, turns the fiddle into a snare drum when nobody is soloing. Anger is one of the players most tied to that sound, and young string bands now treat it as a standard tool.
He also plays baritone violin, which he used in the Turtle Island String Quartet, and mandolin. His writing runs from fiddle tunes to jazz pieces, published in three tune books between 2023 and 2025. In three seconds you can name him by the bounce in his swing eighths and the chop that follows.
Influences and legacy
Anger names David Grisman as his main mentor and lists Tony Rice, Stéphane Grappelli, Vassar Clements, Django Reinhardt, J.D. Crowe, Jimmy Martin, and Bill Monroe as influences. Mike Marshall has been his closest musical partner for more than 40 years.
His legacy runs through his students and bandmates. At Berklee and at camps like Swannanoa, Kaufman Kamp, RockyGrass Academy, and Fiddle Hell he has taught a generation of string players. The IBMA’s 2020 Distinguished Achievement Award named his mentorship.
Signature tunes and songs
Waiting on Vassar Fiddlistics Diary of a Fiddler Tideline.
Essential recordings
The David Grisman Quintet (1977) Tideline, with Barbara Higbie (Windham Hill, 1982) Turtle Island String Quartet (Windham Hill, 1988) Psychograss (Windham Hill, 1993) Diary of a Fiddler (Compass, 1999)
Awards and honors
MacDowell Fellowship UCross Fellowship Artist at Large, John Hartford Memorial Festival (2018) IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award (2020) American String Teachers Association Artist-Teacher Award (2023)
Watch and listen
Mr Sun plays Anger’s tune Waiting on Vassar at an American String Teachers Association conference. Listen for the swing feel and watch his bow hand when he moves from lead to rhythm.
What to learn from Anger
Learn Waiting on Vassar. It is a swing tune with fiddle-tune bones, so it works at a bluegrass jam and at a jazz session. The technique to steal is the chop. Hold the bow near the frog, drop it onto the strings on beats two and four, and stop the sound at once. Practice it with a metronome on a three chord song until it sounds like a snare. Once you have it, you can back a singer at a jam without playing a single fill.
Sources
Darol Anger, official site Darol Anger, bio, official site Darol Anger, Wikipedia Darol Anger, IBMA award recipients Turtle Island Quartet, Wikipedia Psychograss, Wikipedia David Grisman Quintet, Wikipedia Darol Anger, Compass Records Darol Anger fiddle lessons, ArtistWorks
Related players
See the fiddle players hub and the bluegrass fiddle guide for more progressive players. Vassar Clements and Stéphane Grappelli are the jazz fiddlers behind his sound. Bruce Molsky is his old-time counterpart and duo partner. Casey Driessen built a career on the chop, and Brittany Haas plays in the string band world Anger helped build.