Sarah Jarosz

Sarah Ellen Jarosz was born in Austin, Texas, on 23 May 1991 and grew up in Wimberley. She started on the mandolin at ten and went on to guitar, clawhammer banjo and octave mandolin. She met Sara Watkins at a festival when she was nine, and Aoife O’Donovan noticed her playing when she was fifteen. In her senior year of high school she signed with Sugar Hill Records, which released Song Up in Her Head on 16 June 2009. She produced it with Gary Paczosa, with Chris Thile, Darrell Scott, Stuart Duncan and Jerry Douglas among the guests; it reached number one on Billboard’s bluegrass albums chart, and its instrumental “Mansinneedof” was nominated for the Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance. That fall she enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music, graduating with honors in 2013 with a degree in contemporary improvisation.

She made two more albums for Sugar Hill while she studied. Follow Me Down (May 2011), recorded in Nashville and again produced with Paczosa, brought in Béla Fleck, Douglas, Duncan, Viktor Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Shawn Colvin and Scott along with Alex Hargreaves and Nathaniel Smith, who made up the rest of her touring trio, and Punch Brothers joined her for Radiohead’s “The Tourist”; its song “Come Around” was nominated for Song of the Year by the Americana Music Association. Build Me Up from Bones (September 2013) was nominated for the Grammy for Best Folk Album, and its title song for Best American Roots Song. She also played mandolin on the singer and guitarist Michael Daves’s Orchids and Violence (Nonesuch, 2016), a set of old-time and bluegrass songs with Noam Pikelny, Brittany Haas and Mike Bub, singing tenor on one track.

Undercurrent (Sugar Hill, June 2016) won the Grammy for Best Folk Album, and its “House of Mercy” the Grammy for Best American Roots Performance. By then she was working with Watkins and O’Donovan: the three had first sung together at a workshop at the 2014 Telluride Bluegrass Festival, played their first show as a trio at Celtic Connections in Scotland in January 2015, and toured as I’m With Her. Their first album, See You Around (Rounder, February 2018), recorded at Real World Studios in England with Ethan Johns, brought the trio the Americana Music Association’s Duo/Group of the Year award in 2019, and “Call My Name,” written by the three of them, won the Grammy for Best American Roots Song in 2020.

Moving to Rounder for her solo records, she released World on the Ground on 5 June 2020; it won the Grammy for Best Americana Album, and its “Hometown” was nominated for Best American Roots Song. Blue Heron Suite (May 2021), written and recorded in 2017–18, was nominated for Best Folk Album, and Polaroid Lovers (January 2024) for Best Americana Album, with “Runaway Train” nominated for Best Americana Performance. I’m With Her’s second album, Wild and Clear and Blue (Rounder, 2025), won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 2026, and its “Ancient Light” won Best American Roots Song. She has appeared three times on Austin City Limits and often on A Prairie Home Companion, Live from Here and the Grand Ole Opry, and in 2026 she was among the guests on Lindsay Lou’s album Bluegrass Women. She is based in Nashville.

• 2017: Grammy, Best Folk Album, Undercurrent
• 2017: Grammy, Best American Roots Performance, “House of Mercy”
• 2019: Americana Music Association Duo/Group of the Year, with I’m With Her
• 2020: Grammy, Best American Roots Song, “Call My Name” (with Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan)
• 2021: Grammy, Best Americana Album, World on the Ground
• 2026: Grammy, Best Contemporary Folk Album, Wild and Clear and Blue (I’m With Her)
• 2026: Grammy, Best American Roots Song, “Ancient Light” (with Watkins and O’Donovan)