Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper Will Bring Bluegrass to Cooperstown Summer Music Festival

The Cooperstown Summer Music Festival (CSMF) will present Grammy-winning fiddler Michael Cleveland and his band Flamekeeper on Wednesday, August 12 at 7:00 PM at Fenimore Farm and Country Village. The concert is part of CSMF’s 28th season, running July 15 through August 17, 2026.

Widely regarded as the defining bluegrass fiddler of his generation, Cleveland is a Grammy winner, twelve-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.

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 nine 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.

Country Music Hall of Famer Vince Gill has described Cleveland as one of the greatest fiddle players he’s ever heard, adding that playing with him makes everyone around him play fearlessly. On the stage, that quality is unmistakable: Cleveland’s performances blend blistering technical command with deep musical soul, rooted in bluegrass tradition but always pushing against its edges.