About

Gillian Grassie (say: Jillian Grassy) is a harpist/singer-songwriter whose signature brand of jazz-minded indie pop showcases her “knack for turning seemingly insignificant events into songs worthy of everyone’s attention,” (Origivation Magazine).

Classically trained in both voice and harp, Gillian departed from her traditional music background and began writing original songs while living abroad in Switzerland during her sophomore year of high school. Upon returning to the States, she graduated high school a year early and turned down conservatory acceptances to dive head first into the Philadelphia singer-songwriter circuit. Gillian was booked on the spot after playing a song at The Point’s open mic – her first public performance of original material – and quickly became a local favorite.

Since then, she has independently released two critically acclaimed recordings, her 2005 EP To an Unwitting Muse and 2007’s Serpentine, which Music for America hailed as “an album that belongs on every critic’s top-ten list not only for the year, but for the decade.” Both sold out of their original pressings. Of her live performance, Grammy-winner Marc Cohn has said: “After hearing only one song, I became an instant Gillian Grassie fan. It’s rare to hear a young singer with such control and understated soulfulness, and even more rare to hear a harp provide such a deep percussive groove. I was immediately captivated by her sound.”

She has toured at premier listening rooms along the East Coast and throughout the Southern U.S., including The Tin Angel, World Café Live, Eddie’s Attic,  The Kimmel Center, Appel Farm, The Carrollton Station, The Living Room, and The Bitter End, and has been selected to perform at several music festivals, including WXPN’s XPoNential Music Festival, Musikfest, and the Edinburgh International Harp Festival, where she debuted at the tender age of fourteen. Gillian has worked with many artists, including John Legend and Jim Boggia, and her song “Silken String” finished second in the 2008 New York Songwriters Circle Competition. She was most recently awarded a Watson Fellowship, which will take her and her harp through Germany, France, India, Indonesia, China and Japan for a year-long study of the relationships between new technologies and independent music scenes around the globe.

Gillian Grassie is a Philadelphia native. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2009 with a degree in Comparative Literature.