PORTLAND — The multi-Grammy wining Alison Brown Quartet will be appearing at 8 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 10 at the State Street Church, 159 State St., Portland, with special guests the Jerks of Grass.

All tickets are $36.50 and general admission. They may be purchased at www.heptunesconcerts.com.

“The Song of the Banjo,” Brown’s first album since 2009, will drop on Oct. 9. 

Acclaimed as one of today’s finest and progressive five-string banjo players, the 2015 IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award/2014 United States Artist Fellowship recipient and Compass Records co-founder mixes seven masterful originals with six surprising covers of pop and rock classics from the ’70s and ’80s (“Dance With Me,” “Feels So Good,” “Time After Time,” “Carolina in the Pines” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” and the Deluxe Edition CD bonus track, “What’s Going On”), boldly going where no banjo album has gone before.

By the time Alison started her Harvard education in 1982, and long before she joined Alison Krauss’s Union Station, she was already a highly recognized roots banjo player criss-crossing the country with legendary fiddler Stuart Duncan and winning the Canadian National Banjo Championship among many other accomplishments. While at Harvard, she helped re-form New England’s premier bluegrass band, Northern Lights.

After receiving an MBA at UCLA , and doing a stint in San Francisco’s financial investment world, she joined up with Alison Krauss and went on from there to become Michelle Shocked’s music director before embarking on her solo career, which has resulted in several Grammy Awards and nominations for both her solo work and collaborations with Krauss and Bela Fleck, as well as a very prestigious 2001 Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance.

She and her husband, Garry, live in Nashville and have two daughters.