The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Allison de Groot was named a recipient of the 2024 Steve Martin Banjo Prize . She rose to prominence over the last decade playing alongside Bruce Molsky as a member of the Mountain Drifters as well as in a duo with fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves .  De Groot hails from Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada, and she has received two Canadian Folk Music Awards and a Juno nomination. She recently launched her online banjo instructional program on the ArtistWorks platform. I've had the opportunity to see de Groot in concert twice, once with Molsky and once with Hargreaves. She is a versatile player, whose style effortlessly balances driving rhythm for raucous dance tunes and breakdowns, while elevating lyrical melodic phrases. She can match the fiddle note for note, but also is adept at exploring harmonic counter melodies. De Groot is well deserving of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize, which has been presented annually since 2010 and has been presented by the nonprofit group, the Fresh Grass Foundati...