CW Nora Brown with Sami Braman
City Winery Nashville Presents Nora Brown with Sami Braman live on Saturday, December 27th at 7:30 PM!
Nora Brown was introduced to traditional music by chance as a six year old. What her parents assumed would be standard ukulele lessons became a coveted entrance into the world of old-time music. From his tiny studio apartment in Brooklyn, the late Shlomo Pestcoe, a historian and old-time musician taught Nora old time tunes on the ukulele and through his continued instruction other traditional instruments– the fiddle, mandolin, guitar and banjo.
Nora now plays traditional Appalachian music with a focus on banjo playing from Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. 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.
She toured across the US, Europe, and Japan, playing renowned festivals including the Cambridge Folk Festival, Newport Folk Festival, Roskilde Festival, and the Trans-Pecos Festival of Love in Marfa, Texas. She has performed live on NPR’s Tiny Desk twice, TED Salon, WNYC’s Dolly Parton’s America 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 NPR’s All Songs Considered.
Since 2019 she has released four albums on Brooklyn’s own Jalopy Records Label. All records have charted on the Billboard Bluegrass Charts during the first week of release.
“If you don’t know Nora Brown, your world is about to change” - Robert Plant - (Mojo Magazine -AUG. 2025)
The New Yorker called her most recent solo record Long Time To Be Gone - “A disarming collection of traditional laments and exquisite banjo instrumentals”.
Fretboard Journal called her record Sidetrack My Engine - “Some of the most interesting and haunting traditional music we’ve heard... impossibly talented”
Nora performs solo but also frequently as a duo with award winning fiddler Stephanie Colema
Sami Braman has been playing the fiddle since she was 6 years old, coming up amid the music festivals and jamming communities of the Pacific Northwest’s vibrant traditional Old-Time music scene. A member of The Onlies and a frequent collaborator with Willie Watson (David Rawlings Machine, Old Crow Medicine Show), she has performed at festivals like Pickathon, MerleFest, Freshgrass, Green Mountain Bluegrass Festival, ROMP, and Bristol Rhythm and Roots. Sami and Willie just wrapped up a run opening up for Alison Krauss and Union Station on their Summer 2025 Arcadia tour. Sami moved to Nashville in 2021 and shortly after recorded and released her first solo album of original tunes, Riveter. Aptly named for the myriad fiddling styles she nimbly “rivets” together, the album pulses with an old-time groove throughout and Braman’s sheer joy in playing her instrument rolls off it all in waves. She'll be joined by her band, featuring Frank Evans on banjo, Emily Mann on bass, and Jake Stargel on guitar.
