Jeremy Kittel, only 25 years old, has already energized the world of Celtic music like few others before. This, in good part, is beacause he's already won multiple national Scots Fiddling championships, is a member of the Grammy-winning and ground-breaking classical Turtle Island Quartet, won a Grammy for his work in jazz, and to top it all off, won the inaugural Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin award. The only question surrounding Jeremy is will his carreer path follow that of Joshua Bell or Mark O'Connor?
His band is equally young, and equally talented. Josh Pinkham on mandolin, Nathaniel Smith on cello, and Simon Chrisman on hammered dulcimer are all some of the most talked-about young musicians today. Describing their brand of Celtic is pretty tough; it can be traditional, it can be wildly jazz or classical inflected. It can go straight to bluegrass, or Cape Breton. One thing it isn't: predictable. This is the future of American string music.
