Allard/Butterfield Duo

Banjo phenom Max Allard and award winning bassist Craig Butterfield met as members of the EZRA Quartet, a genre-hopping group featuring Allard and Butterfield along with mandolinist Jacob Jolliff and guitarist/composer Jesse Jones. Having a shared musical background and love for jazz, classical, and progressive bluegrass, Allard and Butterfield formed The Allard/Butterfield Duo, with the goal of performing some of their favorite music across diverse musical styles, as well as original music composed by both.
Max Allard is a banjoist, multi-instrumentalist and composer from Chicago. He received a Bachelor of Music in Composition from Oberlin Conservatory in May 2025. Max released his debut solo album Odes / Codes in January 2022 and March Maxness in 2023. Max is currently touring with the Michigan based bluegrass band Full Cord. Max is the winner of the 2018 RockyGrass Banjo Competition and the 2019 FreshGrass Banjo Award.
Bassist Craig Butterfield is the Professor of Double Bass and Jazz Studies at the University of South Carolina, where he directs one of the largest bass studios in the Southeast. Winner of the South Carolina Arts Commission Music Fellowship for 2018/2019, Butterfield has toured and recorded with jazz great Maynard Ferguson, as well as leading projects of his own on the Summit, Centaur, and Adhyâropa record labels.