Nora Brown Banjo

Here is an amazing musician who just cropped up on my radar this morning – Nora Brown.

Nora Brown is a guitar and banjo player from Brooklyn. Nora started learning music at the age of 6 from the late Shlomo Pestcoe. From his tiny studio apartment in Brooklyn, Pestcoe instilled in her the belief that music is meant to be shared.

Nora Brown

Nora plays traditional music with a focus on Southern Appalachian banjo and guitar playing. Along with mentors in the northeast like the late John Cohen she also has traveled and learned directly from master musicians including Alice Gerrard, George Gibson and the late Lee Sexton and Art Rosenbaum.

She has played numerous venues and festivals in the US and Europe including the Newport Folk Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the Trans-Pecos Festival of Love in Marfa Texas, and Folk Holidays in the Czech Republic. She has performed on NPR’s Tiny Desk, TED Salon, WNYC’s Dolly Parton’s America Podcast and an official showcase at the 2022 Americana Fest in Nashville.

Since 2019 she has released 3 albums on Brooklyn’s own Jalopy Records Label and all records have charted on the Billboard Bluegrass Charts during the first week of release.