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Intro to Up-Picking: A Clawhammer Banjo Workshop with Nora Brown
December 30, 2023 : 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
The Handmade Music School presents: Intro to Up-Picking: A Clawhammer Banjo Workshop with Nora Brown on Saturday, December 30th, 2023. Join us from 3-5pm at The Floyd Country Store. The cost is $25.00.
In this workshop, we’ll go over the basics of the up-picking style on the banjo. This is a really cool technique that’s used heavily in Eastern Kentucky, so we’ll most likely learn a tune from that area- maybe a Virgil Anderson tune? Up-picking opens up a new world of right-hand patterns and rhythmic possibilities and is a great simple style that can be made more complex depending on what suits you! This workshop is right for anyone intermediate level or above that’s new to the up-picking style- or even a veteran- it can be a great place to just add another song to your repertoire.
About 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 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 Folkfest, the Philadelphia Folkfest, 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.
Nora has been interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition, WBUR Here and Now and she’s been included on Bob Boilen’s All Songs Considered.
Since 2019, Nora Brown 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.
The New Yorker called her most recent record, Long Time To Be Gone, “A disarming collection of traditional laments and exquisite banjo instrumentals”. Fretboard Journal called her second album Sidetrack My Engine – “Some of the most interesting and haunting Traditional music we’ve heard… impossibly talented”
She has won numerous banjo and folk song competitions at various fiddlers conventions including the Clifftop Appalachian String Band Music Festival and The Grayson County Old- time and Bluegrass Fiddlers Convention.
Nora performs solo but also as a duo with award-winning fiddler Stephanie Coleman. She also continues to collaborate with singer-songwriters Jackson Lynch and Hannah Read.