Tony Trischka

Banjo Instructor
Nashcamp Fall Banjo Retreat

Tony Trischka has helped to reinvent the banjo, in terms of widened technical vocabulary, compositional range, and variety of contexts.

To date he has recorded twelve solo albums, featuring such folks as David Grisman, Pete Seeger, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, William S. Burroughs, Charles Osgood, Alison Krauss, the Violent Femmes and members of REM.

Says Béla Fleck: "You think about somebody like Miles Davis or John Coltrane, people who learned everything about jazz and then digested it and it came out a new way. I think Tony's very similar; he's that kind of figure in the banjo world. Tony was ahead of his time. My springboard was Tony Trischka, and without Tony, none of what's happened with my music would have happened." 

Tony's musical travels have taken him from Broadway to Croatia to New Zealand, performing with bluegrass bands, avant garde jazz groups, symphony orchestras and percussion ensembles. His radio appearances have included A prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, Fresh Air and Weekend Edition. He's performed with John Denver on the CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Foxfire, also starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and was profiled, along with Bela Fleck, on CBS Sunday Morning.

Tony is in demand as a teacher, with many instruction books and videos to his credit. He's also served as a columnist for numerous acoustic music publications, and has written liner notes for Bela, Alison, and many others.