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, acclaimed by the NY Times for his "vital rich-hued solo playing." 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. After becoming one of the first wave of cellists to adopt a strap in order to stand while playing, Mike was the first standing cellist to perform at Carnegie Hall, which the NY Times called "Breathless … Half dance, half dare."
The Mike Block String Camp was founded in Vero Beach, Florida in 2010, with a mission to empower all string players to learn new ways of playing music from teachers who specialize in a variety of styles. Mike also leads the Multi-Style Cello School at http://www.ArtistWorks.com, featuring the largest library of instructional videos for cello, and an international community of creative cellists exploring Classical, Jazz, Bluegrass, and more. In 2012, Mike was appointed Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music.
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.
Mike has served as music director for musicians as diverse as Yo-Yo Ma, Bobby McFerrin (Grammy-winning vocalist), Marcus Printup (trumpeter from Jazz@Lincoln Center), Emalie Savoy (singer at Metropolitan Opera), Lil' Buck (hip-hop dancer), Damian Woetzel (Principal at NYC Ballet), Bill Irwin (Comedian/Actor from Sesame Street), the Silk Road Ensemble, and the Knights (Classical orchestra). Other musicians Mike has performed with include will.i.am (Black Eyed Peas), Stevie Wonder, Allison Krauss, Edgar Meyer, Mike Marshall, Zakir Hussain, The National, Bon Iver, My Brightest Diamond, Tim O'Brien, Rachel Barton-Pine, Marcel Khaliffe, Goran Bregovic, Simone Dinnerstein, Dawn Upshaw, Anthony McGill, and he has recorded with Lenny Kravitz, Shakira, Joe Zawinul, Alasdair Fraser, and many others. Mike was also selected by Yo-Yo Ma to serve on the founding Leadership Council (2011-2012) of the Silk Road Ensemble.
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, D'Addario strings, a David Gage Realist pickup, and a cello strap of his design, called The Block Strap.