JESSE PARIS SMITH is a Grammy® nominated musician, producer, writer, and co-founder of Pathway to Paris. She was born in Detroit, and spent her childhood in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. She lives and works in NYC.
Since 2013 she has studied and trained professionally in the areas of therapeutic music, wellness coaching, and most extensively in grief support and death education. She is a certified Grief Coach and this is a topic very dear to her heart. Jesse is also passionate about performance anxiety and wellness for musicians and performers alike, since studying Performance Wellness in 2014, a deeply transformative practice which vastly improved her life both on and offstage.
In 2014, Jesse and cellist Rebecca Foon founded Pathway to Paris, a non-profit organization dedicated to turning the Paris Agreement into reality and offering tangible solutions for combatting global climate change, helping cities to design and implement ambitious climate action plans to go 100% renewable/zero emissions as soon as possible. She is on the Associate Board of Tibet House US, where she has co-curated and hosted events and has performed often at their annual benefit concert at Carnegie Hall. In light of the Himalayan earthquake in April 2015, she founded Everest Awakening, an initiative which leads various projects on the ground in Nepal and Tibet. Since 2018, she has been an Ambassador for the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF), advocating for OCD and related anxiety disorders, working to dispel myths and misinformation (OCD is not an adjective!), and assist in connecting those in need with support and treatment. She is passionate about mental health and wellness, with a particular focus on grief and loss. She is able to offer one-on-one sessions and lead workshops.
She began performing in 2004, sitting in on keyboard with her mother’s band, and with her first studio recording the piano for the title track on Trampin’ when she was 16. She went on to form and play keyboards in several bands, playing often with her mother’s band, collaborating with different musicians, and composing songs of her own. In 2012, she and Christopher Tait formed Belle Ghoul, for which she played keyboards and sang background vocals, releasing many albums through Elefant Records. In 2013 she and composer/producer Eric Hoegemeyer started Tree Laboratory, their musical collaboration and production company in which they composed music for many projects, including films by Steven Sebring (one series receiving a Clio Image Award in 2015). Jesse’s compositions have been commissioned for documentary films, commercial work, installations, audiobooks, and live score performances. In September 2019, she released a collaborative album with Laurie Anderson and Jesse’s longtime collaborator Tenzin Choegyal called Songs from the Bardo, released on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, holding the #1 spot on the New Age Billboard Chart for 2 weeks, and nominated for a Grammy® for 2021 in the New Age category. The album was based on a live performance the trio shared at The Rubin Museum of Art in NYC, which the museum listed as their #1 most captivating performance of 2015.
In February 2019 she began performing her own songs, playing piano/ukulele and singing. On New Year’s Eve 2019, Jesse released her first solo single, ‘Legacies,’ with all proceeds going to Pathway to Paris. She has since continued to perform, has completed a collection of demo songs, and is working on a full length solo album.
For over 10 years, Jesse has been curating, producing, and hosting events in NYC, the USA, and around the world. For two years, she curated, produced, and co-hosted a monthly multi media true story telling event called Talkingstick at the Rubin Museum of Art, the Himalayan art museum in NYC. She co-curated and co-hosted a weekly seasonal event at Tibet House US called Mindful Music and Sound Series, an educational music based series focused on Buddhism and Tibetan culture. Other events have included ‘To Nepal with Love,’ which featured Nepalese and Tibetan poets, artists, and musicians(and was on the museum’s list of the top 5 events of 2015), a 'Tribute to Roby Springer' held at Anthony Film Archives, and ‘Gathering for Nepal and Beyond,’ a relief fundraiser for Nepal and the Himalayan region after the earthquake of April, 2015. For many years, Jesse and her mother curated an annual event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, creating evenings of music, poetry, and stories inspired by one of the exhibits in the museum, or by a literary or historical figure or era. Events included themes such as Emily Dickinson, Hildegard von Bingen, Joan of Arc, William Blake, Georgia O'Keefe, and Walt Whitman. They also brought this idea to other venues such as MoMA and The Morgan Library and Museum. Along with continuing to perform with her mother, Jesse has continued this practice of events with a theme in her own curation and performance, most recently an event of music, readings, and stories related to Henry David Thoreau and the writers of Concord, Massachusetts. Pathway to Paris, her collaborative non-profit organization with cellist Rebecca Foon, has produced and hosted events since 2014, including two consecutive evenings the Le Trianon theatre in Paris during the first week of Cop21 2015, their 2017 event at Carnegie Hall in NYC, programming at FORM Festival in Arizona, a live radio hosted event for WQXR/WNYC, events in California (Masonic Auditorium in SF and Ace Theatre in LA) to cap off the Global Climate Action Summit 2018, a festival in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History in NYC 2019, live events in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the opening night of Cop26 in Glasgow, Scotland 2021, and most recently a series of virtual events and festivals online. Whether she is putting together an event on her own, in collaboration with others, or is invited onto an event as a performer or speaker, Jesse enjoys seeing people of all different backgrounds and vocations joining together, creating platforms for new collaborations and experiences that otherwise may not have taken place, which includes that of the persons onstage and those in the audience.
