Acclaimed banjo player brings band to Whitefish

Alison Brown, a Grammy winning instrumentalist considered one of the best pickers in the world, will appear in Whitefish for a special performance with her band at the O'Shaugnessy Center in Whitefish on Nov. 5 at 8 p.m.

Brown achieved an international reputation as a banjo player by pushing the instrument out of its familiar Appalachian settings and into new musical territory. Her sound blends the rugged drive of bluegrass with the harmonic sophistication of acoustic jazz.

Over the course of seven critically acclaimed recordings, including the 2001 Grammy winner "Fair Weather," she has established herself as one of the pre-eminent instrumentalists in acoustic music and is the only female ever to have been named Banjo Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association.

Brown's childhood was filled with music and the company of great musicians. Before pursuing her adult career, though, she attended Harvard, studying history and literature, then UCLA, where she secured her MBA. That led to two years with the public finance division of Smith Barney in San Francisco.

After taking a hiatus to return to composing and recording music, Brown assembled the material for her solo debut. While it heralded a new voice on the banjo, "Simple Pleasures" also owed much to the California-based jazz/bluegrass hybrid sound pioneered by mandolinist David Grisman, who produced the album.

Brown first appeared on the national scene when she was asked by Alison Krauss to join her band Union Station in 1989. Around the same time, Brown joined Krauss for a successful three-year run that included a place on Krauss' Grammy-winning "I've Got That Old Feeling" album, as well as bluegrass music's highest accolade for an instrumentalist: the International Bluegrass Music Association Banjo Player of the Year in 1991.

Brown has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Weekend Edition and BET's Jazz Central, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Dirty Linen and Acoustic Musician. Stereo Review wrote that "Alison Brown has raised the art of banjo playing to a higher calling," while Billboard has praised her music's "unique sonic signature and inescapable beauty."

Joining Brown for her O'Shaughnessy show will be Andrea Zonn (fiddle/vocals), John R. Burr (piano), Larry Atamanuik (drums) and Garry West (bass). Zonn has toured extensively with Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett and James Taylor. Her latest Compass release "Love Goes On" earned her recognition from the Country Music Critics Poll as one of 2003's Top 10 New Acts.

Tickets to Brown's performance, a Whitefish Theatre Company production, are $22 and can be purchased by calling 862-5371.

For more information, visit http://www.whitefishtheatreco.org