Alison Brown

Alison Brown, born on August 7, 1962 in Hartford, Connecticut, is an American banjo player and guitarist. She began playing guitar at age eight and banjo at ten, winning the Canadian National Banjo Championship by twelve, which led to a performance at the Grand Ole Opry. In 1987, Alison Krauss invited Brown to join her band, Union Station. Brown's debut album Simple Pleasures was released in 1990. She won the International Bluegrass Music Association Banjo Player of the Year award in 1991 and collaborated with Béla Fleck on "Leaving Cottondale" from her 2000 album Fair Weather, winning a Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance in 2001. Brown co-founded Compass Records in 1995, which became a leading label for Irish and Celtic music. She formed the Alison Brown Quartet, melting jazz and bluegrass, which recorded four albums from 1996 to 2008. Brown released solo albums Fair Weather (2000), and Stolen Moments (2005), including collaborations with Indigo Girls, Seamus Egan, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Andrea Zonn, Mike Marshall and Mary Chapin Carpenter. She followed with The Company You Keep (2009), The Song of the Banjo (2015), and On Banjo (2023). In 2025, she collaborated with Steve Martin for the album Safe, Sensible and Sane.

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