font-weight: 400;">Between the two of them, fiddlers Jason Carter and Michael Cleveland have amassed an impressive 18 Fiddle Player of the Year Awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association – an easy majority of the fiddle trophies given out over the awards’ 34-year history. Plus, they’ve separately racked up 17 Grammy nominations and four wins. This pair of critically-acclaimed, generational talents in bluegrass and roots music have joined forces on stage, and with the 2025 release of their first duo album ever, Carter & Cleveland.

Carter & Cleveland builds on the duo’s more than 30 years of friendship, a natural culmination of their frequent musical cross pollinations and collaborations across that time. They first met as teenagers – Cleveland was 13 and Carter was 19 – and they were already mutual admirers of the skill, musicality, reverence for tradition, and the unique fiddle fire they each heard in the other’s playing.

For thirty years, Jason Carter has been the fiddle player for the Del McCoury Band—the most awarded group in bluegrass history. He’s won three Grammy awards, including 2018’s “Best Bluegrass Album” with the Travelin’ McCourys, of which he is a founding member. And he’s taken home five IBMAs for “Fiddle Player of the Year,” a staggering number that isn’t quite so crazy once you realize just how many bluegrass greats have turned to Carter for collaboration. As a fiddler, Carter has been featured on albums by Steve Earle, Ricky Skaggs, Dierks Bentley, Charlie Daniels, Vince Gill, Asleep at the Wheel, and many more, all in addition to his tireless touring and recording with Del as well as the Travelin’ McCourys.

Michael Cleveland is the most awarded International Bluegrass Music Association Fiddle Player of the Year, with twelve wins to his name. He is a six-time winner of the IBMA Instrumental Performance of the Year and his band, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, has won Instrumental Group of the Year seven times. In 2019, Cleveland was the subject of the documentary, Flamekeeper: The Michael Cleveland Story and his album Tall Fiddler was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. Michael Cleveland was inducted into the National Fiddler Hall of Fame in 2018. He received the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in 2022.

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Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland