Grammy winner Alison Brown brings banjo to Franklin Theatre

Grammy-winning banjoist Alison Brown performs at the Franklin Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 17, at 8 p.m., according to Williamson Source.

Brown, the only female five-string banjoist inducted into the American Banjo Hall of Fame, blends bluegrass with jazz and Americana influences across 12 solo albums. The show brings a Grammy winner and Hall of Fame inductee to the 300-seat venue at 419 Main St. in downtown Franklin. Tickets are available through the Franklin Theatre website.

The performance comes a year after Brown and comedian Steve Martin released their collaborative album "Safe, Sensible and Sane" via Brown's Compass Records label. That record debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Bluegrass Album Chart, according to The Bluegrass Situation. Steve Martin has described Brown as the great lyrical genius of modern banjo, according to her Compass Records biography.

Brown's path to the stage took an unusual detour through Wall Street. She completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard University and earned an MBA from UCLA before working in investment banking, according to her official biography. She left finance when Alison Krauss called looking for a banjo player, toured with Krauss and Union Station, and formed her own group in 1993.

Brown won the Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance in 2001 for "Leaving Cottondale," a collaboration with Béla Fleck from her album "Fair Weather." In 1991, she became the first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Association's (IBMA) Banjo Player of the Year award.

She also received the Country Music Hall of Fame's Louise Scruggs Memorial Forum honor and co-founded Compass Records with her husband, bassist Garry West.

In an October 2025 interview with The Bluegrass Situation, Brown described the banjo's range: "It can be edgy, but it can be mainstream, palatable at the same time."

Brown co-chairs the annual Steve Martin Banjo Prize and serves on the adjunct faculty at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music. The Franklin Theatre, a nonprofit Art Deco-inspired venue, reopened in 2011 after the Heritage Foundation of Williamson County acquired and renovated it.

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