Twenty year-old Brendan Carey Block, the fiddler for The Glengarry Bhoys of Ontario, Canada, was the 2000-2001 US National Junior Scottish Fiddle Champion and three-time New England Champion and has been performing on fiddle since he was ten. During the past nine years Brendan has received very enthusiastic responses to his energetic performances at festivals and concerts across the country. It has been a great honor for Brendan to open for and perform with Natalie MacMaster, Jerry Holland, Barachois, The Battlefield Band, Cherish the Ladies, Matapat, The Glengarry Bhoys, Clann an Drumma, Gaelic Storm, Alasdair Fraser, Jerry O'Sullivan, Jean Redpath and Jay Ungar, and to share the stage with other such great Cape Breton fiddlers as Brenda Stubbert, Joe Cormier, John Campbell, and Rodney MacDonald and Glenn Graham. Brendan has been an active member of the Strathspey and Reel Society of New Hampshire and was the Music Director for their Tartan Day 2000 Concert. Brendan's father, Rich Block, accompanies him on guitar. Rich, who has been performing and recording since the early 1970s, was in the eclectic band Jacob's Reunion, was a founder of the popular New England group Bodaich, and recently spent a year as bassist for Robbie O'Connell. Brendan and his father have also performed with Jason Roach, piano player from Chéticamp, Cape Breton; and for many Cape Breton stepdancers including Judy McKenzie and Four on the Floor. Occasionally, Brendan performs with his new band, which includes Mari Black on fiddle, Owen Marshall on guitar, and Matt Phenix on drums.

For five summers Brendan received scholarships from the New Hampshire Highland Games and the Saint Andrews Society of New Hampshire enabling him to travel to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to immerse himself in the driving style of his beloved traditional Cape Breton music. At the Ceilidh Trail School of Celtic Music in Inverness he studied with the great fiddlers Buddy MacMaster, Natalie MacMaster, Jerry Holland, Brenda Stubbert, Jackie Dunn, Richard Wood, Brendan Mulvihill, and John McCusker of The Battlefield Band. When in Cape Breton he also studies Cape Breton stepdancing and attends daily concerts and dances, soaking up every minute of music. In addition, Brendan has studied with Alasdair Fraser, Martin Hayes, and Bruce Molsky at Valley of the Moon Scottish fiddling school in Boulder Creek, California and with David Greenberg, Buddy MacMaster, Séamus Connolly, and Catriona MacDonald at Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp in Colorado on full scholarships as well as for five years at Boston College's Gaelic Roots program with JP Cormier, Liz Carroll, Buddy MacMaster, and others. He recently attended Mark O'Connor's Fiddle Camp near Nashville where he studied with Darol Anger and Mark Wood.

In 2000, Brendan was the proud recipient of Ossian USA's Edward "Ned" McDonagh scholarship to Gaelic Roots. His winning essay was selected from entrants from around the world.

At home on a small sheep farm in Antrim, New Hampshire, Brendan listens to Cape Breton, Scottish, and Irish music continually, plays for contradances, and performs at a variety of events throughout the east. For four years he studied with Mary Lea (of Bare Necessities and Yankee Ingenuity) from Brattleboro, Vermont, and recently completed an apprenticeship under a grant from the New Hampshire Council on the Arts with Rodney Miller, a National Endowment for the Arts Master Fiddler. Also under apprenticeship grants, Brendan studied Highland pipes for two years with Gordon and Lezlie Webster of the New Hampshire School of Scottish Arts, where he is on the faculty as a fiddle instructor. He also teaches a number of fiddle students through Ted Herbert's Music in Manchester, New Hampshire. In addition to the many hours he devotes to fiddle and pipes each week, Brendan helps maintain and race a team of Siberian Husky sled dogs and is an avid mountain biker, sailor, and certified telemark ski instructor.

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