Gene Lowinger became the first fiddler from the North to work on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry with Bill Monroe, the Father of Blue Grass music, as a Blue Grass Boy in the 1960's. He subsequently studied classical violin with the World famous pedagogue Raphael Bronstein, and worked as a freelance musician in the New York music industry. Later in life he pursued his love of photography as a freelance photojournalist. In 1992 he received a grant to travel to Russia to document post-Soviet Moscow. He has had published several books about music, and most recently the University of Illinois Press published his reminiscences and photographs of his first mentor, Bill Monroe, entitled 'I Hear A Voice Calling'.