Jean Rohe
Email
jeanrohe@newschool.edu
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Jean Rohe writes one-of-a-kind narrative songs, concerned as much with the interior lives of her narrators as with the wider world outside them. Jean recently won the 2022 Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk songwriting contest with her deeply personal and timely song “Animal”. Her latest album as a bandleader, Sisterly, won best Adult Contemporary Album at the Independent Music Awards and her duo Robinson & Rohe's 2023 album Into the Night is out on Ani Difranco's Righteous Babe Records.
A prolific songwriter, Jean is perhaps best known for her video single, “National Anthem: Arise! Arise!” an aspirational alternative national anthem performed live with brass ensemble and choir, which has now been covered hundreds of times by soloists and choirs across the US. Her co-write with Liam Robinson, “The Longest Winter” was featured on the 2020 Hadestown cast holiday album. And her award-winning 2013 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.”
Her 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.”
Jean is also a devoted songwriting mentor, working with adult writers and youth alike to foster a love of the writing process through Carnegie Hall, The New School, and in private class settings.
This year Jean debuted her concert memoir, 74 Corridor, a project for which she won a 2022 Brooklyn Arts Council Grant. Additionally, Jean recently won a 2023 NYC Women’s Fund for Media grant, the 2023 Pamela Phillips Oland Excellence in the Art of Writing Lyrics Award, and was a 2022 Jonathan Larson Grant finalist.
Jean lives in Brooklyn, NY.