GUZO | Vacancy | July 2020

“Pioneering cello player, composer, singer, and educator, Mike Block, has announced his latest album, Guzo, for an August 21 release on Bright Shiny Things. Block released the first single from the album “Expression of Concern,” featuring Syrian oud virtuoso Kinan Adnawi, in conjunction with the news.

The new album, which combines elements of North African, Middle Eastern and Persian musical traditions, will be Block’s third album, in three different genres, in less than one year.

A Grammy Award-winner with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, Block studied and trained in the classical world at The Julliard School and Cleveland Institute of Music, but his curiosity and imagination as a musician knows no bounds or borders. On Guzo, Block taps into fellow members of Silk Road Ensemble, students from Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshop, of which Block is an instructor, and musicians Block has met along his travels throughout the world.

Meaning “journey” in the Amharic language Guzo features eight original compositions, each inspired by a different culture and style of music: Malian, Levantine Arabic, Indian, Nigerian, Persian, Gulf Arabic (Khaliji), Ethiopian, and Chinese.

Inspired by the idea that different parts of our personality manifest when interacting with different types of people (i.e. you act differently around your boss than with your friends), or when you are in different environments (you act differently at home than at church), Block, “wanted to see what kind of composer I might become within different musical environments and languages.”

Each composition was recorded collaboratively with musicians native to each style, “many of whom are close friends that I could trust with my vulnerability as I invited them into my compositional and arranging process,” Block states. “My goal was for the musicians featured on each piece to feel they could play naturally in their native language while finding how my own personal voice translated to that language.” This resulted in a journey fr Block in both personal and social, internal and external, psychological and geographic.

Yo-Yo Ma has hailed Block, as the “ideal musician of the 21st-Century.” The New York Times praised Block for his “vital rich-hued solo playing.”  Mike has also collaborated in performance and recordings with Stevie Wonder, Bon Iver, St. Vincent, The National, Will.i.am, The New York Philharmonic, Bobby McFerrin, Allison Krauss, Mark O’Connor, Edgar Meyer, Mike Marshall, Julian Lage, Rhiannon Giddens, Sierra Hull, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, Natalia McMaster, Bruce Molsky, Darol Anger, Zakir Hussain, and Rachel Pine, amongst others.

-Adriana Chavez, Vacancy (July 2020)