GET TO KNOW JENNYREBECCA
American vocal performer, JennyRebecca Ronning, hails from a small town in Kansas and now resides in Berlin. Her artistic journey started as an opera singer in NYC, then took a dramatic turn to songwriting - inspired by everything from Bulgarian and Gregorian chanting, to avant-garde and pop.
It was after moving to Berlin for her opera career, J.R. experienced a devastating loss and her grief found its release and healing in a daily songwriting project that completely changed the course of her career from solely classical to folk-pop and songwriting. Over 1,000 songs and Song Diary entries later, she released her first album and continues to explore how her musical roots of folk, Americana, country and soul, mix with the classical training she received in NYC and the electronic world of music she later discovered in Berlin.
JennyRebecca has been favorably reviewed by institutions such as the New York Times, was a featured singer and actress in the blockbuster movie Ludwig II (2012), and she has recorded with Grammy award winning producers like Charlie Peacock (The Civil Wars, Switchfoot) and Gordon Raphael (The Strokes, Regina Spektor). As an independent artist, J.R. grew her instagram community to over 30 thousand followers, and with the support of her community, successfully executed two Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns as well as her own DIY House Show tour for her first album, Brilliant After All, in 2017, touring 53 cities in the United States, Europe, Scandinavia and the UK, and was invited to perform her songs with the North State Symphony Orchestra in California on the last stop of that tour.
These days you will find J.R. singing originals as well as opera arias with her electric guitar and loop machine on the streets of Berlin or as a featured soloist at Monbijou Theater, but her own artistic pursuits are fuel to the fire of her great passion of using music and creativity as a means for healing. The Artists Rising Podcast and Collective were birthed out of J.R.’s own experiences and need for healing, as she started to bring together things she wished she would have learned, as a younger artist. The themes of creative wellness, mental and emotional resilience, wholehearted artistic development, creative recovery, healing perfectionism, cultivating compassion, finding your true voice/true self, and the power of spontaneous daily creativity, pulse fiercely through all of the programs and projects she offers to both beginning and experienced artists.
J.R. was a Teaching Artist for The Metropolitan Opera Guild, a professor of voice at Simpson University, and has led theater groups and vocal workshops with students in Brooklyn and the Bronx, middle eastern refugees in Berlin, and people struggling with mental illness and depression with a focus on healing and integration through creativity. She gives individual sessions for singing and voice, for the purpose of vocal coaching as well as to accompany people in singing for holistic personal development. Somatic Singing and Musical Neuroplasticity workshops, The Artists Rising Podcast, Songwriting Retreats and month-long challenges, The Songwriters Studio, Somatic Choir Berlin and The Artists Rising Collective are all programs that she has created with healing and freedom as the core motivation and inspiration. This is her mission and desire - that people become more fully alive and more fully themselves, using the voice, music and creativity as tools to transform and thrive.
War Child
