Alison took an unusual path to becoming an internationally recognized banjoist. After completing her undergraduate studies at Harvard University and receiving an MBA from UCLA, she pursued a career in investment banking. But she missed the bluegrass music she’d grown up playing in Southern California so much that when Alison Krauss called looking for a banjo player, she made the decision to give up her Wall Street career to pursue music. She toured with Alison Krauss and Union Station, and Michelle Shocked before forming her own group, The Alison Brown Quartet, in 1993.
Since that time, Alison and her band have been winning over traditionalists and mainstream music fans alike with her unique style. They have toured extensively throughout the US and abroad with stops at some of music’s most prestigious venues including The Kennedy Center, Newport Folk Festival, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, MerleFest, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Philadelphia Folk Festival, FreshGrass, The Cambridge Folk Festival (England), Celtic Connections (Scotland), Dublin National Concert Hall (Ireland), Galway Arts Festival (Ireland) and Verbier Music Festival (Switzerland). The band has also traveled to Central and South America at the invitation of the US Information Agency and to Japan as Friendship Ambassadors on behalf of the Nashville Mayor’s office to celebrate a new sister city relationship between Kamakura, Japan and Music City.
Alison has recorded 12 critically-acclaimed solo albums, received a GRAMMY and multiple GRAMMY- nominations. She has also received the USA Artists Fellowship in Music and a Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association. Alison has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s All Things Considered and in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times among many other publications.
Alison is also the co-founder of the internationally recognized roots music label Compass Records Group which Billboard Magazine has called “one of the greatest independent labels of the last decade.” Compass Records Group oversees a catalog of nearly 1,000 releases across multiple label imprints, including Red House Records, Green Linnet and Mulligan Records. Alison currently serves on the Board of the Nashville Chapter of the Recording Academy, on the adjunct faculty of Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music and as co-chair of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize.
