Scottish Fiddle Champion and Pioneering Cellist to Perform at Fogartyville in Sarasota

Hanneke Cassel (fiddle) and Mike Block (cello/voice) have been playing music together since 2007. Together, these dynamic performers present a diverse and exciting show featuring traditional and original music drawing from their Celtic, Americana, and Classical backgrounds. The duo will perform at the Fogartyville Community Media and Arts Center on Friday, March 30 at 8pm. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Advance tickets are available at www.wslr.org.

Effervescent and engaging, Boston-based fiddler Hanneke Cassel is a performer, teacher and composer whose career spans over two decades. Her style fuses influences from the Isle of Skye and Cape Breton Island with Americana grooves and musical innovations, creating a cutting-edge acoustic sound that retains the integrity and spirit of the Scottish tradition. Hanneke’s music is a blend of the contemporary and traditional, described by the Boston Globe as “exuberant and rhythmic, somehow wild and innocent, delivered with captivating melodic clarity and an irresistible playfulness.” She has performed across North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

Mike Block is a pioneering multi-style cellist, singer, composer, and educator. Hailed by Yo-Yo Ma as the “ideal musician of the 21st-Century,” Mike is part of the Grammy-award winning Silk Road Ensemble, a graduate of the Juilliard School, and an Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music. As one of the first wave of cellists to adopt a strap in order to stand and move while playing, Mike was the first standing cellist to perform at Carnegie Hall, using a cello strap of his own design, called the Block Strap, a performance which the NY Times called “Breathless … Half dance, half dare.”

photo from Fogartyville

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