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JPR Live Session: Rose Cousins

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A native of Prince Edward Island, Rose Cousins lives in Halifax Nova Scotia. She deeply values being part of multiple music communities, and is constantly fueled by collaboration. Cousins’ 2012 album We Have Made A Spark celebrated her Boston community and featured a cast of musicians Cousins had known and played music with for a decade. It won a JUNO Award, 3 East Coast Music Awards, a Canadian Folk Music Award, was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize, and made picks/best of lists in USA Today, NPR Music and Oprah Magazine. Her music has found its way into several TV shows including Grey’s Anatomy.

But following that success at the 2013, Cousins reached a limit she didn’t know existed. Fearing burnout after years of constant touring she made a deliberate decision, barring a select few shows, to stop touring and focus on other creative avenues. Her goal was to connect with artists, writers, and producers to make songs in new ways, new sounds with new people, not knowing where they would go and not needing to. Her catalog  and perspective expanded, and in that time her new album, Natural Conclusion, was conceived.

A long time film photographer, Cousins spent time shooting, developing film, and printing photos using the dark room at the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design. She also held a deep desire to develop skills in co-writing, so she began in Nashville the fall of 2014. From then, and throughout the following year, she traveled to Los Angeles, Nashville, Toronto, Ireland, and Boston where her focused creative time yielded dozens of songs, photographs, relationships, and a much needed change of pace.

Cousins called Natural Conclusion “the most honest and vulnerable thing” she has made to date. “Ultimately, a life consists of many relationships, some chosen and some assigned, each playing different roles on a subjective, expansive spectrum of success and failure. We choose, we are chosen, we are left, we leave, we stay anyway, we grieve, judge and empathize, relinquish, atone alone, keep and let go. Each relationship will come to its Natural Conclusion.

As FM Network Program Director and Music Director, Eric oversees many aspects of JPR's broadcast day. He still hosts the occasional Open Air or classical music shift, and is the driving force behind JPR Live Sessions - our popular series of live in-studio music performances and conversations.