Now a perennial favorite, the Vero Beach International Music Festival, which runs concurrently with the Mike Block String Camp, returns to the First Presbyterian Church of Vero Beach the week of July 6-11.
The camp was founded in 2010 by Grammy-winning cellist Mike Block, an educator, arranger, composer and all-around creative. Among other things, he is the inventor of the Block Strap, which enables cellists to move about the stage or even, as a recent YouTube video proves, while singing and skating.
The faculty consists of world-class musicians trained in a multicultural mix of everything from Americana and Celtic to classical, bluegrass and jazz.
“We have got just over 100 participants; we’ve kind of settled into that size, which works really great for us,” says Block. Participants range from novices to professional musicians.
There are some 20 participants from Vero Beach, including seven scholarship students from the Gifford Academy for the Performing Arts. Evan Robinet, GAPA music director and strings instructor, has been part of the MBSC community for many years.
Block and wife Hanneke Cassel, who is also on faculty, reside in Boston and also have a home in Vero Beach. A charismatic Scottish fiddler, Cassel performs at Celtic festivals and concerts worldwide and will again offer her extensive talents as a “modern fiddler” and instructor.
Of the other exceptional faculty members, two are brand new this year.
One is Farayi Malek, a Grammy-nominated jazz and contemporary vocalist and composer, who performs a mix of genres, from Americana and hymns to the blues and jazz.
“I’ve been hearing how great she is for years because she’s on faculty at both of the colleges where I’ve been on faculty, the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music,” says Block.
“I finally got to connect with her and see her perform in person and was just totally blown away, so I was really excited to invite her to MBSC. It’s been a number of years since we had somebody who’s primarily a singer, an element we used to have more frequently.”
Also new is Eva Scow, who plays mandolin and violin and teaches at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles.
“What’s special about her is she plays the mandolin, which in normal assumptions is like a bluegrass instrument. But her background is actually jazz and Latin music, primarily as a jazz musician and improviser. There’s a strong Brazilian tradition for mandolin,” says Block.
“She’s our only picked instrument on the rosters of the faculty concerts, so she’s going to bring, I think, a really unique combination.”
Scottish fiddler and “experimentalist” Jenna Moynihan returns for her second year. An assistant professor at Berklee and a frequent collaborator with Cassel, Moynihan brings a distinctive voice shaped by Celtic, Scandinavian and exploratory fiddle traditions.
Also returning, Kimber Ludiker is a two-time Grand National Fiddle Champion and a founding member of the bluegrass group Della Mae.
“Apart from being an awesome band that is Grammy nominated, they are a fun standout in the bluegrass community because they are an all-female band,” says Block.
A longtime MBSC faculty member, Natalie Haas is a Juilliard-trained cellist and Berklee associate professor accomplished in a broad array of music genres. She has toured the globe many years with Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser, and with Mark O’Connor’s Appalachia Walz Trio.
New York-based cellist Zachary Brown brings back his classical, jazz and contemporary expertise, as well as his instructional skills in “chopping” and improvisation. Brown regularly performs with the string quartet Westbound Situation, which fuses jazz, classical and bluegrass genres.
Fiddler, educator and clinician Lauren Rioux leads online and in-person viola and violin classes and workshops worldwide, teaching all variety of students from beginners to classicists looking to improve their skills.
Fiddler/violinist Taylor Morris has performed in 47 states and 13 countries, collaborating with musicians from a multitude of backgrounds and musical genres. He currently plays in Tricia & Taylor, a “genre-bending violin/fiddle duo” with concert violinist Tricia Park, and with the string folk sextet The Sound Accord.
The multi-talented Jacob Craig, director of music and arts at the host venue, is an accomplished educator, organist, jazz pianist and conductor of numerous local choral groups. A competitive highland bagpiper, he is Pipe Major of the Vero Beach Pipes and Drums.
Some special international musicians will serve as assistant faculty, including multi-style Portuguese violinist Joana Carvalhas, and Ed Harper, an English musician currently serving as orchestra director at the Singapore American School, who specializes in cello, violin and viola.
“We’re actually launching a new element this year that we’re calling MBSC Junior, a half-day program from 9 a.m. to noon during the week for 5- to 10-year-olds,” says Block. Age 10 was historically the minimum entry age.
While the juniors will be able to access some of the main camp elective classes, they will primarily be taught by young professional musicians who grew up attending the camp and are now assistant faculty.
“They’ve been coming to the camp since they were kids, and now they are not kids anymore.
Which is so great for me,” says Block.
They include twin sisters Aubrey (cellist/vocalist) and Olivia (violinist/fiddler) Breen, who perform American folk, Celtic and Scandinavian music together in the folk duo Aubrey + Olivia.
Now based in Boston, Aubrey graduated from the University of Notre Dame where she sang and arranged string parts with the Notre Dame Folk Choir and also studied at Irish Traditional Music in Dublin. Olivia graduated from the University of Colorado-Boulder and is a teaching assistant at the Tetra Chamber Music Institute in Arizona.
Olivia was the 2022 recipient of the Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin, a specially created violin awarded annually at the camp to a promising young musician. The 2025 recipient, Caroline Martin, will hand it off to the new recipient at the culminating concert.
Keefer Glenshaw, a multi-style cellist and performance artist based in Boston and Brooklyn, is known for performing durational endurance pieces, including a solo 24-hour performance, “Purification Process” and an instructional piece by Yoko Ono, “Secret Piece.”
Chris Tate, a modern jazz cellist who “blends classical technique with improvisation, groove, and contemporary harmony,” is currently studying at Berklee and teaches workshops and clinics in the Boston area.
Violinist and storyteller Eve Wodarcyk has played with the Willow String Quartet and the Gilbert Town Fiddlers and utilizes her arts administration and digital marketing background as the administrative director for Block and the MBSC.
The public is invited to attend any of three concerts – or all of them. The Mainstage 1 & 2 Concerts will feature different faculty and assistant faculty, but there will also be collaborative pieces. The MBSC Culmination Concert will showcase the students’ work.
“That’s a pretty exciting one. All of the students are playing their own arrangements and collaborations that they’ve created over the week. Every year we’ve got a slightly different faculty, so there are different connections and combinations of people which is really fun,” says Block.
The Mainstage 1 and 2 Concerts take place Wednesday, July 8 and Friday, July 10. Tickets are $25. The Culmination Concert is free; scholarship donations are appreciated. All concerts begin at 7:30 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church.
For more information, visit Vero.Show.
Photos by Joshua Kodis
