only $20

Alison Brown is a brilliant genre-bending player who takes the banjo and guitar far beyond their Appalachian roots with a rich, exquisite blend of bluegrass, jazz, Celtic and Latin influences that has been described as simply jaw-dropping. She has won and been nominated for several Grammy awards including a nomination this year for Best Country Instrumental Performance and is often compared to another banjo prodigy, Béla Fleck for her unique style of playing. Her first appearance at the Grand Ol’ Opry was as a teenager but then music took a back seat to education while she got a degree from Harvard followed by an MBA from UCLA. After a couple of years as an investment banker, she got back into music playing banjo with Alison Krauss and Union Station and then as musical director for Michelle Shocked in the early 90s. This experience led Brown to develop her own music, a merger of bluegrass with jazz and folk idioms, bringing to mind the fusion styles of Béla Fleck and David Grisman. In 1995, she and her husband Garry West founded Compass Records which has been called “one of the greatest independent labels of the last decade” by Billboard Magazine. The Quartet also includes West on bass, John R. Burr on piano and Larry Atamanuik on drums. Billboard also said, “Like James Taylor’s voice or B.B. King’s guitar, Alison Brown’s banjo is an instrument possessed of a unique sonic signature and an inescapable beauty.”

Alison Brown’s website
Video of Alison Brown Quartet - banjo
Video of Alison Brown Quartet - guitar