"Not only does she make astoundingly beautiful music but she is thoughtful, reflective, and courageous." - No Depression
About Jean
Jean Rohe writes one-of-a-kind narrative songs, concerned as much with the interior lives of her narrators as with the sociopolitical forces that shape them. Her long list of awards is a testament to the breadth of her vision, spanning prizes in roots music, song craft, lyric writing, theater arts, social-justice work, jazz performance, and arts education from organizations as diverse as the Brooklyn Arts Council, The NYC Women's Fund for Media, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the Jonathan Larson Foundation, the Johnny Mercer Foundation, and MacDowell.
She is perhaps best known for her ambitious video single “National Anthem: Arise! Arise!” an aspirational alternative national anthem which spread via word-of-mouth and has been performed hundreds of times by artists and choirs across the US. Her deeply personal and timely song “Animal” brought a fresh lens to the topic of bodily autonomy and choice, just as the Dobbs abortion decision was announced, landing her on the Basic Folk Podcast and earning a songwriting prize at the Kerrville Folk Festival. Her full-length album Sisterly won best Adult Contemporary Album at the Independent Music Awards in 2019 and her award-winning debut release, Jean Rohe & The End of the World Show, was hailed by an Elmore Magazine reviewer as “enchanting” and “remarkable in so many ways I can think of no comparison.”
Jean's writing and performance styles are the product of 20 years of experimentation and practice, learning on her feet as a side-person and bandleader in New York's wide-ranging music communities. “I grew up in a household where music-making and storytelling––far from a rarified vocation for prodigies and professionals––was an act woven into the social life of our family and friends, ” she says. “I carry that spirit with me into the music I make today.”
Theater
Jean's performance memoir in-progress, 74 Corridor, won a Brooklyn Arts Council Grant and to-date has been performed as a work-in-progress piece at Ars Nova. Her performance memoir The Odysseus Agreement had performances at National Sawdust, Joe's Pub, and development support from the Finger Lakes Theater Festival, MacDowell, and the Goodspeed Writers Colony, among others.
Jean was part of the original cast of A Star Has Burnt My Eye by Howard Fishman, celebrating the life and music of Connie Converse, which premiered at the BAM Next Wave Festival.
Jean lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Collaborators
Her long-time collaboration with songwriter, producer, orchestrator, and performer Liam Robinson has borne extraordinary fruit. Their duo Robinson & Rohe released Into the Night on Ani Difranco's Righteous Babe Records, and their co-written song “The Longest Winter” was featured on the Hadestown cast holiday album, If the Fates Allow. Other frequent collaborators include the experimental/jazz violinist/singer Charlie Burnham and multi-instrumentalist Skye Soto Steele in a songwriting collective called Eureka Shoes. She also frequently works with choreographers (Katie Rose MacLaughlan, The Wilder Project), illustrators (Andrew Benincasa, Sakshi Jain), and other writers and artists.
Teaching
A devoted songwriting mentor, Jean loves working with adult writers and youth alike to foster a love of the writing process. For nearly a decade she has been an artist in Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute, creating lullabies with incarcerated parents on Rikers Island through the Lullaby Project and mentoring songwriters through Musical Connections at Sing Sing Prison. She is part-time faculty at The New School Jazz and Contemporary Music Program teaching songwriting and ensemble-playing. Her popular private and group songwriting lessons are on offer periodically through the year, and she is a sought-after mentor at music camps for adults and youth.
Performance Highlights