Alison Brown Acoustic Quartet with John Doyle and Casey Driessen

Alison Brown Acoustic Quartet with John Doyle and Casey Driessen

Alison Brown has achieved success in many areas: a Harvard graduate, record label co-founder and owner (of Compass Records Group), mother, and, the role that most people know her in: banjo virtuoso.

As an internationally recognised musician with a wide-reaching and loyal fan base, Brown first came to national prominence when she was asked by Alison Krauss to join her band Union Station in 1989, whom she toured extensively with for 3 years. However, Brown had already made a name for herself prior to that by performing extensively with fiddler Stuart Duncan, and on occasional pick-up sessions with artists such as Vince Gill, Byron Berline and John Hickman. In 1991 she picked up the International Bluegrass Music Association Banjo Player of the Year - bluegrass music’s highest accolade for an instrumentalist.

Alison has recorded 7 critically acclaimed solo albums to date and has toured with her Quartet throughout the US and abroad. Her albums include the Grammy-nominated ‘Simple Pleasures’ and ‘Replay’, which features the Grammy-winning track “Leaving Cottondale”. This is her fourth appearance to the Shetland Folk Festival (1994/2001/2005). She will be joined by three fantastic musicians. Garry West on bass. John Doyle on guitar and Casey Driessen on fiddle.

As well as being a busy producer and co-owner of Compass Records, Garry has toured with country artistes such as Patty Loveless and Mark Collie as well as rhythm and blues legend Delbert McClinton and folk/pop songstress Michelle Shocked.

The Festival is also delighted to welcome back John Doyle, who is one of the most influential and important musicians in Irish music today. He was a founding member of Irish American supergroup Solas in the 1990s and recently served as band leader for the Joan Baez band. As a guitarist, he is unparalleled for his harmonic and rhythmic genius but in recent years, Doyle has also emerged as an important singer of Irish music.

Completing the lineup is Casey Driessen, who like his music is inspired, unconventional and truly original. He has built a following as both a solo artist and collaborator, touring the world with artistes such as Béla Fleck (& the Flecktones), Steve Earle, Darrell Scott and Tim O'Brien. He is also a founding member of The Sparrow Quartet and never without a pair of red shoes.