The Cooperstown Summer Music Festival will present Grammy-winning fiddler Michael Cleveland and his band Flamekeeper 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 12 at the Fenimore Farm and Country Village.
The concert is part of the music festival’s 28th season, running through Aug. 17.
“Widely regarded as the defining bluegrass fiddler of his generation, Cleveland is a Grammy winner, 12-time IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year, National Fiddler Hall of Fame inductee, and recipient of the NEA’s National Heritage Fellowship, the nation’s highest honor in folk and traditional arts. Flamekeeper has won the IBMA’s Instrumental Group of the Year seven times,” according to a news release.
Cleveland was born completely blind in Henryville, Indiana, and a childhood ear infection cost him most of the hearing in one ear. None of that slowed him down. He grew up surrounded by old-time and bluegrass music at local jams and festivals, picked up the fiddle at age four through a Suzuki program, and told his teacher from the very first lesson that he wanted to play bluegrass, specifically “Orange Blossom Special,” and by age 9 was sitting in with Bill Monroe at the Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival. In his early teens, he appeared on the “Grand Ole Opry” and “A Prairie Home Companion.” After graduating from the Kentucky School for the Blind, he formed Flamekeeper in 2006 and built it into one of the most celebrated bands in bluegrass.
“This is the kind of concert that surprises people who have never heard bluegrass played with such jaw-dropping intensity,” said Cooperstown Summer Music Festival founder and artistic director Linda Chesis. “Michael Cleveland is a once-in-a-generation talent, and seeing him perform with Flamekeeper is something you don’t want to miss.”
Tickets are $35 adults, $15 students and children. Tickets must be purchased in advance at cooperstownmusicfest.org/new-events or by calling Purplepass Tickets at 800-316-8559 (Option 1; $2 service fee per phone order).