Grace McLean

Called “electrifying” by The Huffington Post and “phenomenal” by the New York Times, Grace McLean is a multi-hyphenate actress-singer-writer-teacher on the rise. In addition to performing in the Broadway hit Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Grace also makes time for her acclaimed original music, both as a solo artist and with her band Grace McLean & Them Apples. With a sound that combines Regina Spektor's quirkiness, Nellie McKay's jazz sensibilities, Fiona Apple's irreverence, Kimbra's sass and Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs' rhythm, McLean adds up to one beautiful weirdo. Manhattan User's Guide writes, "this pop and jazz singer writes seriously infectious melodies with seriously antic lyrics. Her voice can raise the roof, or she can slide off a note and break your heart,” and Stephen Holden of the New York Times says “Ms. McLean’s voice [is] a flexiible instrument with unexpected reserves of power...Behind her playful adventurousness lies a well of passion.”

Grace was a headlining performer and vocal instructor at the SingStrong a capella festivals in DC and Chicago in 2014 and in 2015 her band participated in a US State Department sponsored tour of Pakistan. Grace McLean & Them Apples headlined the Lincoln Center American Songbook in both 2015 and 2016, and Grace is the 2017 recipient of the Hunt Family Emerging Artist Award through Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Grace’s work as a performer and educator has taken her to Jamaica, Scotland, Italy, Croatia, Serbia and Pakistan. In New York, you can find her and her band at Joe’s Pub, 54 Below, Rockwood Music Hall, Ars Nova (where she developed the interactive concert experience Grace McLean: Lives in Concert), and the Museum of the American Indian, where she performed as part of a panel discussion on storytelling for The Economist’s 2012 Ideas Summit. As a performer Grace has been seen at Lincoln Center, New York City Center, The McKittrick, BAM, the ACE Hotel (where she collaborates monthly with The Dance Cartel’s show OnTheFloor) and numerous other venues both uptown and downtown. She is also a frequent contributor to Obie winning investagative theater company The Civilians’ cabaret series “Let Me Ascertain You.”

McLean's pop opera In The Green (about 12th century German mystic Hildegard von Bingen) has been developed at CAP21, SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Orchard Project Johnny Mercer Writer’s Colony at Goodspeed, and has been commissioned by Lincoln Center Theater. Grace released her new EP in May 2015, featuring the single, and her first feature video, “Natural Disaster". The band will release a new full length album in 2017. Make Me Breakfast, the 2012 EP from Grace McLean & Them Apples, is available on iTunes now. Find out more at www.gracemclean.com