Abigail Washburn didn’t set out to become a musician, but one thing led to another—and that’s led to a brilliant, if unconventional, career for the banjo player and singer.

“There is definitely a miraculous edge to what’s happened to me in the past eight years of my life,” says the 28-year-old musician, reached at home in Nashville, Tennessee. And she’s not kidding: if the stars hadn’t been exactly right, she could well be studying comparative law in Beijing instead of touring the folk-festival circuit with her all-star Sparrow Quartet.

Washburn never set out to be a musician. But a six-week course in Mandarin at Colorado College, a liberal-arts academy in Colorado Springs, set her off on a journey to China, where she started thinking hard about the United States.

“I was searching for something about America that I could be really proud of, and American music was like a home run,” she explains. “As soon as I started learning about our immigrant cultures and how they mixed and became a new form of music, I fell absolutely in love. And it was during that time that I heard an LP of Doc Watson playing ”˜Shady Grove’, and thought it was just this primordial sound. It rang so deep and true for me that I just wanted to go out and buy a banjo and start singing ”˜Shady Grove’ myself.”

That’s exactly what she did, and soon more miracles ensued. While jamming with Chinese musicians, Washburn discovered that she had a rare facility for mixing ancient Appalachian ballads and the equally poignant sounds of Guangdong and Kazakhstan. Eventually she took her music to Nashville, where a freakish chance encounter led to her signing with Vancouver-based Nettwerk Productions.

“I was in a line in a coffee shop, and a woman said she liked my shirt,” she recalls, laughing. “I have to say, it’s probably the coolest shirt I own, so I was lucky to be wearing it that day. Anyway, she said, ”˜I like that shirt. Are you a musician?’ And I said, ”˜Well, kind of. I guess I am.’ And she said, ”˜If you have a demo, I’d love to hear it.’

“I didn’t have a demo, but that meeting incited me to cut one—and this happened to be the woman who was the personal assistant to [Nettwerk CEO] Terry McBride at the time. I sent her the demo and I didn’t hear back for a long time, but then suddenly I got a call around Christmastime, and she said, ”˜Hey, Abby, get a lawyer. We want to sign you!’ ”

On Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet, her second CD for Nettwerk, she’s joined by the band that will accompany her at this weekend’s Vancouver Folk Music Festival: Béla Fleck, the world’s reigning virtuoso on the banjo; Casey Driessen, an uncommonly funky bluegrass fiddler; and Ben Sollee, a cellist who’s just as comfortable playing syncopated bass lines as soaring string parts.

That’s heady company, but her band is just one more miracle that Washburn is learning to live with.

“I’m the first person to tell you I’m not a great musician at all,” she says modestly. “But I have all these different elements that add up to what I am, and together they have a power that I wasn’t even aware of, and that I’m still discovering. And I guess these elements add up to a path which, hopefully, will bring more joy and more peace and more love to the world.”