Steve Martin, Alison Brown Will Host 2025 Bluegrass Music Awards

Photo Credit: IMBA (Steve Martin & Alison Brown)

The International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) has announced that Steve Martin and Alison Brown will co-host 2025 IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards.

The show will take place on September 18, 2025 at 7:30 pm ET at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Tickets for the award ceremony are now on sale via Ticketmaster.

Steve Martin is an Academy Award winner, five-time Grammy recipient, Emmy winner, and Mark Twain Award honoree. He is widely known for his career as an actor and comedian, starring in movies including The Jerk (1979), Planes, Trains, & Automobiles (1987), Roxanne (1987), and Father of the Bride (1991). Currently, he stars in Only Murders in the Building, an award-winning Hulu series now ramping up for its fifth season. Martin has also built a reputation in the music world as a five-time Grammy-winning bluegrass banjoist and composer, performing with sold-out tours alongside Martin Short.

Alison Brown is likewise a key figure in the bluegrass genre. She is a Grammy-winning musician, producer, composer, and the president of Nashville-based Compass Records Group, which marks its 30th anniversary in 2025. She was the first woman to win an instrumentalist of the year award from the IBMA, and is praised for blending bluegrass, jazz, pop, and folk into her banjo work. Brown is the 2025 recipient of the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Louise Scruggs Memorial Forum award, presented for excellence among female music industry executives. She also serves as President of the Nashville Board of Governors for The Recording Academy.

Both Martin and Brown are nominees at the upcoming awards. Their track “5 Days Out, 2 Days Back,” featuring Tim O’Brien, is nominated for Song of the Year, Music Video of the Year, and Collaborative Recording of the Year. The song is set to appear on their collaborative album to be released by Compass Records in October 2025. Brown is additionally nominated for Banjo Player of the Year.

“The IBMA Awards show is always one of my very favorite nights of the year,” comments Brown. “I’m so honored to co-host this year with my banjo pal Steve Martin.”

“I’m thrilled to be hosting with Alison Brown and connecting with all my bluegrass friends as opposed to my kinda dumb comedy friends,” adds Steve Martin.

The IBMA World of Bluegrass event, organized in partnership with the Chattanooga Tourism Company and the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, will run from September 16-20, 2025. The program encompasses a business conference, showcases, the awards ceremony, and IBMA Bluegrass Live!, a two-day festival.

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