About Grace

Raised in a family of musicians and music educators, Music surrounded Grace, from her parents' band rehearsals, to early piano and ear training lessons with her grandmother, to singing in her family's cowboy fiddle band, in which she started to perform at the age of seven. Her family's combined musical performance and teaching heritage stretches back generations. Her grandfather, Paul Rolland, was a seminal string teaching pedagogue who revolutionized string pedagogy with his research and publications (The Teaching of Action in String Playing, among other works), and both of her parents taught music privately and in schools throughout Arizona.

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Trained on many instruments, Grace explores the expression of music through a variety of voices.  After early lessons on the violin and piano and discovering of her love of singing, Rolland picked up the cello at age nine and found her second voice. She trained classically in Tempe, AZ with Debra Pearson and performed in community, regional, and all-state orchestras throughout high school and college. Grace's education then took a different expression, and she studied theater at Arizona State University, where she developed her core beliefs about creative empowerment through the arts, performance, and collaboration. Still in love with music, Rolland sought to find new ways to play the cello and sing, so she became a founding member of the folk-Americana band Run Boy Run.

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Grace Rolland-Redwood is a skilled professional performer, honed by years on the stage. She performs solo under the name Rising Sun Daughter, and her debut EP, I See Jane, was listed as one of the 20 Best Folk Albums of 2019 by PopMatters. She spent six years touring nationally with Run Boy Run, performing in concert halls, festivals, and clubs across over 40 states, winning the Telluride Bluegrass Band competition (2011) and performing twice on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion. These experiences built her belief that encouraging quality performance opportunities can help children and developing musicians of all ages build their confidence to share their music openly with others.

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Throughout her years as a performer, Rolland taught workshops, classes, and lessons at festivals, summer camps, and schools. She taught cello and singing for six years at Rolland Fiddle Camp, worked as a private instructor in various independent music schools throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area, and gained Level One Endorsement as a Paul Rolland String Pedagogy teacher. Through her private studio, The Music Room (LLC), Grace seeks to connect with musicians of all ages to teach and guide her students along their journey in Music.