【Contemporary String
Improvisation Workshop】
主講人:Mike Block
日期:2018年10月20日(六)
時間:15:30~17:10
地點:北藝大音樂二館 M2601
※北藝大絃樂組必到
※歡迎有興趣者前往聆聽
※請絃樂出席同學攜帶樂器，參與課程
Mike Block is a pioneering cello player, singer, composer, and educator,
hailed by Yo-Yo Ma as the "ideal musician of the
21st-Century." Passionate about cross-cultural collaboration through
music, Mike is committed to inspiring individuals and connecting
communities. At home in a wide range of musical styles, through a
multi-genre approach to composition, performance and education, he seeks to
inspire audiences and empower musicians to find joy in the full world of
music.
Mike is member of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road
Ensemble (SRE), having joined in 2005 while a
student at The Juilliard School. Touring extensively throughout the world
with SRE, he has been featured as cello and vocal soloist, contributed
arrangements and compositions, and earned a Grammy Award in 2017 for their
album, Sing Me Home. Mike
also served as Music Director for SRE’s acclaimed opening concert of New York
City's Central Park SummerStage 2011 season
"Night at the Caravanserai: Tales of Wonder".
As an innovator, Mike is among the first wave of cellists
to adopt a strap in order to stand and move while playing. Employing his
patented design, The Block Strap,
Mike was the first standing cellist to perform at Carnegie Hall. The NY
Times characterized the performance as, "Breathless ... Half dance, half
dare."
As an educator, Mike is passionate about creativity and
collaboration. In 2010 he founded the Mike Block String Camp (MBSC) as a way to
provide players of all backgrounds the opportunity to learn from a world-class
faculty in a variety of styles, supporting the exploration and development of
the artistic voice of each student. Mike is also the founding Director of Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshop (GMW), designed to
foster a community of globally minded musicians. He teaches online through his
Multi-Style Cello School at ArtistWorks.com, with an extensive library of
instructional and performance videos, and authored the book Contemporary Cello Etudes, published by Berklee
Press.
Acclaimed by the NY Times for his "vital rich-hued
solo playing," Block's solo performances offer a rich mixture of core
classical repertoire with original compositions. He has collaborated in
performance and recordings with a variety of diverse musicians, including Will.i.am, Edgar Meyer, Stevie Wonder, The New
York Philharmonic, Bon Iver, Zakir Hussain, Rachel Barton Pine, Allison Krauss,
Mark O'Connor, Bobby McFerrin, Darol Anger, and Julian Lage. Mike is an
active recording artist of original material, folk music and cross-cultural
collaborations. He has an ongoing project to record all of the Bach cello
suites in acoustically glorious bathrooms of famous concert halls, BachInTheBathroom.com.
During his time living in New York City, Mike regularly
subbed on Broadway as on-stage cellist for the Pulitzer Prize winning musical, Next to Normal, and he also worked as
Music Consultant on the 2012 film, A Late Quartet.
Mike was the subject of a 2011 feature article in the Wall Street Journal for his
Artistic Directorship of the GALA BROOKLYN Music Festival, featuring
cross-cultural collaborations among locally-based musicians. Mike’s
television and radio credits include 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 attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied cello with Richard Aaron, and received the Jim Hall Prize for Undergraduate Achievement. He earned a Master’s Degree from the Juilliard School, studying with Darrett Adkins and Joel Krosnick. Mike plays on a modern cello made in 2014 by Fabienne Gauchet, a Yamaha electric cello, D’Addario strings, a David Gage Realist pickup, and the patented cello strap of his own design, The Block Strap. In 2012, he was appointed Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music, and in 2018 also joined the faculty of New England Conservatory through the Contemporary Improvisation program. Mike lives in Boston with his wife, fiddler Hanneke Cassel.
Mike attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied cello with Richard Aaron, and received the Jim Hall Prize for Undergraduate Achievement. He earned a Master’s Degree from the Juilliard School, studying with Darrett Adkins and Joel Krosnick. Mike plays on a modern cello made in 2014 by Fabienne Gauchet, a Yamaha electric cello, D’Addario strings, a David Gage Realist pickup, and the patented cello strap of his own design, The Block Strap. In 2012, he was appointed Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music, and in 2018 also joined the faculty of New England Conservatory through the Contemporary Improvisation program. Mike lives in Boston with his wife, fiddler Hanneke Cassel.
