Carter & Cleveland

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 (IBMA), an easy majority of the fiddle trophies given out over the awards’ 34-year history. Plus, they have separately racked up 17 Grammy nominations and four wins. When they first met as teenagers—Cleveland was 13 and Carter was 19—they were already mutual admirers of the skill, musicality, reverence for tradition, and unique fiddle fire they each heard in the other’s playing. 

Now, this pair of critically acclaimed, generational talents in bluegrass and roots music are joining forces on 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. The 2025 album received a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album and won the IBMA’s Album of the Year and Song of the Year for “Outrun the Rain.”

A guitar player since childhood and a fiddler since age 15, Jason Carter inherited his love for bluegrass from his father, a musician himself, and grew up playing at jams, festivals, and campgrounds across Kentucky. For 30 years, he has been the fiddle player for the Del McCoury Band, the most awarded group in bluegrass history. 

First picking up a fiddle at the age of four, Michael Cleveland learned the Suzuki method of violin while attending the Kentucky School for the Blind. While he practiced the violin at school, he played fiddle at home. A 2018 National Fiddlers Hall of Fame inductee, Cleveland has toured and recorded with legendary artists including Béla Fleck, Tommy Emmanuel, Billy Strings, Vince Gill, and more.

Special thanks to our Center Stage Series sponsor AB Jets.