Brandon Seabrook

Nearly 20 years ago, The New York Times dubbed Brandon Seabrook the “World’s Least Rustic Banjo Player.” It is a title he has been affirming, contorting, and exploding ever since. Seabrook attended the New England Conservatory as a guitarist, studying with the likes of Bob Moses. He first picked up the banjo there, but it was soon clear that pedagogy could not contain him, and the emergence of the riotous trio Seabrook Power Plant with his drumming brother Jared hinged on Brandon’s dual interests in ambitious avant-jazz and the ferocity of hardcore. Sure, he played guitar in that band, but the banjo—bowed until it whined like a tortured violin, plucked until it mirrored a glitchy laptop—was Seabrook’s point of distinction, the instrument that emphasized he was in hot pursuit of something new.

In the decades since, Seabrook has continually found it. His latest album, Hellbent Daydream, is a surrealistic saga of instrumental wonder, rendered with a stellar quartet. It follows his debut with a splendid new octet, Epic Proportions, and his ingenious 2024 solo album, Object of Unknown Function, where he used a 100-year-old, six-string “tenor banjo” to elicit uncanny new sounds from a resonator body. Seabrook’s seemingly endless energy remains, but he’s learned to channel it into more space and tunefulness, to finesse the melody that binds together his explorations of melee. At Big Ears 2026, Seabrook will perform as a solo banjoist, and, unless you’ve seen such a set from Seabrook, you have never before heard the instrument move like this.