"Ms. Rohe is a confident young singer whose compositions tend toward a literate and imploring tone."
- Nate Chinen, New York Times
Celebrating her debut album, Lead Me Home, Jean Rohe brings an exciting blend of music from both North and South America. Jean’s beautiful voice and captivating stage presence won her the audience favorite award at the Montreux Jazz Festival (2006) and found her performing everywhere from New York City’s Birdland to Havana’s Teatro National. Her trio features three part harmony singing and the talented Ilia Tsinadze on guitar, Liam Robinson on accordion, and Jean on mandolin and a cornucopia of Latin American percussion instruments. The project involves the full breadth of Jean’s stylistic attractions, challenging traditional boundaries around musical genres. Her original compositions and fresh arrangements of songs from North and South America explore the intersections of jazz, North American folk music, Brazilian and Afro-Peruvian dance traditions.
What sets Jean’s performance apart is that it invites the listener to engage with body, heart, and mind, through captivating storytelling, astute, socially conscious lyrics, and lively rhythms and melodies, in a participatory experience that involves singing, clapping, or dancing along. “The act of singing together is uniquely subversive,” Jean says. “It breaks us out of our individual isolation and carries us into a new space of community with our fellow human beings.”
A versatile musician, Jean began her musical career at eight years old with her family folk band. She has performed with Blue Note recording artist, Robert Glasper, Cuban jazz drummer Dafnis Prieto, the Billboard-charting alt-country group Calexico, and can also be heard with David Moore’s new music ensemble, “Bing and Ruth” and in duet with Liam Robinson, playing traditional American and Irish folk music. She has been heard on New York public radio as part of the Wordless Music Series and co-wrote and performed the music for the feature film “Noise” (2004).
“I am absolutely floored by Lead Me Home. It's some of the best music to hit my iPod in a very long time.”
--Joel Hurd, North Country Public Radio Production Manager
