Alison Brown's career includes touring with both Alison Krauss and Michelle Shocked, as well as a Grammy award for her 2001 album Fair Weather and a Grammy-nomination for her first solo recording, Simple Pleasures. Brown has also won the Banjo Player of the Year award from the International Bluegrass Music Association.
"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," stated Billboard magazine.
Alison Brown began her music career at a young age, playing banjo in several southern California bands alongside fiddler Stuart Duncan as a teenager. After graduating from high school, bluegrass took a backseat while Brown attended Harvard University, earned an MBA, and worked as an investment banker.
"Alison Brown left a career in investment banking for a life as a banjo musician. Anyone who thinks this was a foolish move hasn't heard her play," said The New Yorker.
After several tours with Krauss and Shocked, Brown put her business skills to work, founding Compass Records. Brown tours internationally with the Alison Brown Quartet and currently serves as an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music.
Sunday, February 14, 2010, at 1:00 pm
Four decades into a legendary Met career, tenor Plácido Domingo makes history singing the title role in Verdi's gripping political thriller, which is written for a baritone. [ more ]
Friday, February 12, 2010, at 7:30 pm
ND Music faculty violinist Carolyn Plummer joins the orchestra for a midwinter concert of romantic masterworks old and new. [ more ]
Saturday, February 20, 2010, at 2:30 pm
A concert in celebration of Junior Parents Weekend by the University of Notre Dame Bands, featuring the Jazz Band, Symphonic Band, Symponic Winds, and New Orleans Brass Band. [ more ]
