Surplus of Words

HAILED BY YO-YO MA as the “ideal musician of the 21st Century,” Mike Block is a pioneering multi-style cellist, composer, and educator living in Boston. While still studying at the Juilliard School, Mike joined Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, and shortly thereafter also joined Mark O’Connor’s Appalachia Waltz Trio, which he played in for over three years. Mike has also toured extensively with Darol Anger’s Republic of Strings and The Knights orchestra.

HIS MOST RECENT ALBUM of original songs, Brick by Brick, features music he wrote and recorded while missing nine teeth, as the result of a traffic accident. In 2011, Mike released Naive Melody, an instrumental folk album with The Triborough Trio, and in 2009 and 2010, released two albums of original music with The Mike Block Band: Words R Words (songs), and After the Factory Closes (instrumental).

MIKE HAS PERFORMED on “Late Night with Conan O’Brian”, “Regis and Kelly”, NBC’s 30 Rock, NPR’s “St. Paul Sunday Morning”, WNYC’s “Soundcheck”, APM’s “Performance Today”, WNBC 4’s Chuck Scarborough Show, VH1, The Disney Channel, and the CBS “Early Show”. Mike regularly subbed as on-stage cellist in the Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway Musical, “Next to Normal”, and he also worked with the director of the 2012 film, “A Late Quartet”, as a Music Consultant. Mike was the subject of a 2011 feature article in the Wall Street Journal for his Artistic Directorship of the GALA BROOKLYN Music Festival, and was reviewed by the NY times as having “vital, rich-hued solo playing”.

MIKE RECEIVED THE 2004 JIM HALL PRIZE FOR UNDERGRADUATE ACHIEVEMENT at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied cello with Richard Aaron. Mike also earned a Master’s Degree from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Darret Adkins and Joel Krosnick. These days, Mike proudly uses a cello from the Wayne Burak Shop, as well as D’Addario strings, and a David Gage Realist Pick-up. www.mikeblock.net/