Sarah Jarosz, recognized for both her vocal and compositional talents as well as her accomplished playing on acoustic instruments, first earned notice inside bluegrass scenes, even as her expansive recordings move well past standard roots boundaries. Her clear and powerful singing incorporates strands of folk, country, jazz, and pop, and the one-time prodigy issued her first record, Song up in Her Head, in 2009 while still attending high school. Throughout the following ten years she stood alongside forward-thinking contemporaries such as Sara Watkins and Aoife O'Donovan, later forming the trio I'm with Her with them in 2018. Beyond contributing mandolin, guitar, and banjo as a regular member of the house band on Chris Thile's Live from Here broadcast, Jarosz has produced a string of well-received albums, among them the Grammy-winning World on the Ground from 2020, the deeply felt Blue Heron Suite in 2021, and the refined Polaroid Lovers released in 2024.
Born in Austin, Texas, on May 23, 1991, to parents who both worked as educators, Jarosz took up the mandolin at age ten and was already sharing stages with David Grisman and Ricky Skaggs by the time she turned twelve. Growing recognition for her songwriting prompted comparisons to a new-generation Gillian Welch, leading to a contract with Sugar Hill Records at sixteen. The label released her debut, Song up in Her Head, in 2009, which drew immediate and widespread praise. That year she also began studies toward a degree in contemporary voice improvisation at the New England Conservatory of Music, an unusual path for someone rooted in bluegrass. Her second album, Follow Me Down, came out on Sugar Hill in spring 2011. During her last term at school she tracked Build Me Up from Bones, which featured nine original songs plus two covers—Bob Dylan's "A Simple Twist of Fate" and Joanna Newsom's "Book of Right-On"—and appeared in September 2013.
Following wide-ranging international tours, Garrison Keillor invited Jarosz to serve as an occasional guest host on A Prairie Home Companion. Her move to New York City soon showed itself in her music. She returned to the studio in 2015 alongside co-producer Gary Paczosa, handling guitar, octave mandolin, and banjo while backed by Jedd Hughes, Luke Reynolds, and Mark Schatz; Sara Watkins and Aoife O'Donovan, her I'm with Her bandmates, joined her on "Still Life." Sugar Hill issued the resulting Undercurrent in June 2016. Later that summer Jarosz and O'Donovan joined the newly assembled house band for A Prairie Home Companion once Chris Thile succeeded Keillor in October; they continued with the program after its rebranding as Live from Here in late 2017.
In 2018 Jarosz entered the studio with Watkins and O'Donovan to record I'm with Her's first album, See You Around, for Rounder Records. The project earned a Grammy for Folk Album of the Year. Back on her own, she received parallel acclaim for her fifth release, the 2020 album World on the Ground, which took the Grammy for Best Americana Album. Drawing on childhood trips to the Gulf Coast town of Port Aransas, Texas, she put out the moving, Grammy-nominated Blue Heron Suite in May 2021, material originally captured during 2017 and 2018 sessions. Alongside frequent live appearances, Jarosz has contributed to other artists' recordings, including David Crosby's For Free in 2021, Sierra Ferrell's Long Time Coming that same year, Sara Watkins's Under the Pepper Tree in 2021, Amy Ray's If It All Goes South in 2023, and Bruce Cockburn's O Sun O Moon, also in 2023. January 2024 brought her seventh studio album, Polaroid Lovers, produced by Daniel Tashian and marking her most pop-directed work to date, characterized by atmospheric textures and carefully crafted songs exploring relationships while showcasing her assured instrumental command.
