Alison Brown

Alison Brown ( born August 7, 1962 in Hartford, Connecticut) is an American banjo player and guitarist whose characteristic soft banjo sound is determined by the use of nylon strings. She has received several Grammys and has been nominated for more. It is often called because of their unique playing with Béla Fleck, another child prodigy of the banjo, together. Their music is a mix of jazz and bluegrass with influences from other genres.

Youth

Brown learned to play the guitar at age eight, with ten was added the banjo. At the age of twelve, she met the fiddle player Stuart Duncan. In the summer of 1978 she traveled with Duncan and his father through the country and played at festivals and competitions. She won the first prize in the Canadian National Banjo Championship, which she could experience a night at the Grand Ole Opry.

Harvard University, Northern Lights

1980 Brown went to Harvard University and studied history and literature. After graduating from Harvard she obtained the degree of Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.

During her studies at Harvard helped Brown in 1982, the American bluegrass band Northern Lights reunite five years after their division whose full member it was 1984. Then she went back to California and worked for two years with the bank Smith Barney in San Francisco, but then paused to pursue their musical interests.

Union Station and other projects

In 1987, the sixteen- year-old Alison Krauss asked her to join the band Union Station; Brown played a total of three years, with Krauss. In 1990 she went to Tennessee and was honored by the International Bluegrass Music Association entitled Banjo Player of the Year in 1991. The Alison Krauss album I've Got That Old Feeling in 1990, on which she played banjo, won a Grammy.

In 1992, Brown leader of the band of folk singer Michelle Shocked. This experience led Brown to mix bluegrass with jazz and folk music, similar to Béla Fleck and David Grisman.

Compass Records

In the early 1990s, Brown and her husband, the bass player Garry West started her own label, Small World Music, from 1995, the internationally known label Compass Records originated with artists such as Victor Wooten, Colin Hay, Catie Curtis, Lúnasa, Martin Hayes, Jeff Coffin, Russ Barenberg, Darol Anger and others.

Grammys

Along with Béla Fleck, she won the Grammy in 2000 for best instrumental performance in the Country. She had worked in 1990 to Alison Krauss ' Grammy album I've Got That Old Feeling, and receive a Grammy nomination for her own album Simple Pleasures. In 2001, she won the Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental category for their album Fairweather of 2000.

Present: Alison Brown Quartet

Stolen Moments of 2005, her musically most successful album after Browns own assessment. " For the first time I feel that I have created a truly hybrid sound that reveals his influences - bluegrass, jazz, Celtic music, but as a whole, none of these things is " .. your musical idols she looks at Earl Scruggs, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, but also Cannonball Adderley.

Alison playing with her Quartet on international tours. As a famous alumna of Harvard University, she played at the inauguration of the new university president Dew own.

Discography

Vanguard Records

• Simple Pleasures ( 1990)
• Twilight Motel (1992 )
• Look Left (1994 )
• Quartet ( 1996)
• Best of the Vanguard Years ( 2002)
• Vanguard Visionaries (2007)

Compass Records

• Out of the Blue (1998)
• Fairweather (2000)
• Replay ( 2002)
• Stolen Moments (2005)
• Evergreen (2008)
• The Company You Keep (2008)