Performances + Events
I’m with Her, a popular folk trio that includes singer-songwriters Sarah Jarosz ’13, Aoife O’Donovan ’03, and Sara Watkins, was nominated in November for three Grammy Awards. The group’s latest recording, Wild And Clear And Blue, was nominated in the Best Folk Album category, and the track “Ancient Light” was nominated in the Best American Roots Performance and Best American Roots Song categories. The recognition isn’t new. The trio won a Grammy in 2020 in the Best American Roots Song category for “Call My Name.”
“It’s really nice to get nominated and win,” O’Donovan, who studied in NEC’s Contemporary Improvisation (now Contemporary Musical Arts) Department, said, acknowledging that “there are so many musicians who are never recognized by the industry itself.” Still, she said, “I’m grateful,” though earning awards has never been a goal.
“It’s recognition from a larger community of peers,” Jarosz, who also studied in NEC’s Contemporary Improvisation Department, said, adding that “it’s always a balance.” What’s most rewarding is the opportunity to celebrate achievement as a band. Like O’Donovan, Jarosz doesn’t make music for trophies.
While Jarosz, O’Donovan, and Watkins have been recognized individually and collectively by the Recording Academy (which presents the Grammys) and such institutions as the Americana Music Association and Folk Alliance International, they’ve also long been appreciated by audiences who’ve followed their acclaimed and award-winning solo careers, as well as their work in I’m With Her.
Jarosz, O’Donovan, and Watkins have been in the band together since 2015. It was 10 years earlier, though, that Jarosz and O’Donovan first met at a music festival in Colorado, where the latter, who’d already graduated from NEC, was performing with her band, Crooked Still. Jarosz, at the time, was an ascendant teenage singer-songwriter.
“I was just stunned at how talented she was,” O’Donovan said of Jarosz, with whom she remained friends and collaborated over the years. Today, as then, O’Donovan admires the “deep confidence” Jarosz has in her musicianship.
For Jarosz, it’s O’Donovan’s ear that’s inspiring. “Her ear is just incredible,” Jarosz said, as is “her ability to retain a lot of musical information at once.”
Ear-training studies at NEC, Jarosz said, were “crucial in terms of working without written music.” Through learning by ear, she said, “you get to know the song in a deeper way — by fully internalizing it.”
The ear, O’Donovan pointed out, “is the thing that you use most” when making music. While at NEC, she luxuriated in being pushed out of her comfort zone and “jamming with people who were better than me.”
“That was really good for me,” she said, remembering myriad jam sessions in the basement of the Conservatory’s Gainsborough Street building. Experimentation remains part of her musical practice.
“She’s constantly changing it up” on stage, Jarosz said of O’Donovan, always trying new things, vocally.
“I love being in a band that challenges me,” O’Donovan said, “with two other people who are operating at the top of their game.”
As they prepare to hit the road again in the new year (I’m With Her performed more than 50 shows in the spring and fall), O’Donovan and Jarosz remain enthused and excited about the music they’re making together in the studio and on stage.
“I really enjoy collaborating with other musicians,” said Jarosz, reflecting on the nuances that exist between working as a solo artist and being in a band. “I think being in the band with Aoife and Sara has taught me that.”
For O’Donovan, live performance is fuel. “What I love to do more than anything is play shows,” she said, adding that while she likes working in the studio, “I don’t get off on it the same way I do performing a concert.”
Fortunately, post-Covid, the live-music experience is having a resurgence, O’Donovan said. “People want to be in the room and they want to be part of the performance,” she explained.
That’s vital to a field facing paradigm shifts at algorithmic speed. “It’s an uncertain time for recorded music,” Jarosz said. Still, she said, “I really do believe that live music will always have value.” There’s nothing that can replace the “raw human connection” in that environment. “We talk about that in our band, among ourselves,” Jarosz said. “It’s not just one way when we get on stage. It’s a two-way exchange, and that’s what feels valuable.”
While the recording industry changes shape and form, and AI is insinuated deeper into the mix, Jarosz takes comfort in what’s real.
“I do truly believe that real, human music will always have value.”
Please join us in rooting for these and numerous other NEC alumni when Grammy Award winners are announced on Sunday, February 1.
