Jess Garland

Jess Garland is a Dallas-based singer-songwriter, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary recording and performing artist. A harpist and guitarist, Garland combines harp and guitar loops, vocals, and experimental sound to create music that moves across ambient, jazz, folk, and avant-garde influences. Her work extends beyond traditional performance into film, technology, music education, and community-based projects that explore Black music, string traditions, and access to the arts.

In August 2026, Garland released her debut solo album, GLOW, a seven-track body of work exploring growth, transformation, reflection, and new beginnings. Co-produced with Jonathan “JayAnalog” Thomas of Cure for Paranoia, with additional production by Kierra Gray Thomas of We Them Grays, GLOW features Garland’s harp, electric guitar, vocals, loops, gongs, finger cymbals, bells, and other unconventional sounds. The album includes “New Beginnings,” “I Tried (Live Again),” “Keep It G,” “GLOW,” “Knockin’,” “Better,” and “Brighter Sides.” GLOW is currently under consideration for a Grammy Award in the Best New Age, Ambient or Chant Album category. Garland is a voting member of the Recording Academy.

The release of GLOW also reflects Garland’s longstanding commitment to connecting her career as an artist with her work in the community. Album sales benefit Swan Strings, the nonprofit music education organization she founded in Dallas, supporting free music education and access to instruments for the next generation of musicians.

Garland has built a distinctive performance career from her home base in Dallas, appearing at theaters, museums, festivals, cultural institutions, and community spaces throughout Texas and beyond. In September 2026, she performed at Black Americana Fest in New Orleans, where she also presented her award-winning documentary, Behind the Strings: Amplifying Black Feminism in Guitar Culture. Garland’s work and an interview from her Black Americana Fest performance will be archived at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, Tennessee, adding her work to an archive dedicated to documenting and preserving Black music and its cultural legacy.

In 2026, Garland also performed at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in connection with Rashid Johnson: Sincerely, Yours and opened for ESPRIT 空想 (George Clanton) at the historic Texas Theatre. She has opened for artists including Jackie Venson, Adia Victoria, MNDSGN, The Suffers, Hayden Pedigo, Gingger Shankar, and Madame Gandhi, and has shared stages and programs with artists and cultural figures including Erykah Badu, Dr. Opal Lee, Kam Franklin, and The Seratones.

In 2024, Garland opened for The Suffers at Tulips in Fort Worth and performed with Kam Franklin and The Bayou City Comeback Chorus at the Wortham Theater with Performing Arts Houston. She also shared the stage with Dr. Opal Lee and Erykah Badu for the Juneteenth Freedom Walk in Fair Park. In 2023, she opened for Dru Hill during Deep Ellum Foundation’s Juneteenth Block Party.

Garland produced and performed Luminescence during the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s 2022–23 Elevator Project season at the Wyly Theatre, where she debuted a custom 3D-printed laser harp. The project brought together music, technology, performance, and conversations surrounding racial inequity. In 2022, she presented the TEDx talk “Facing The Music: Finding Your Purpose,” examining the relationship between her musical journey, community work, and sense of purpose. That same year, Garland sold out a concert at Dallas’ Undermain Theatre.

Her multidisciplinary practice also encompasses film and original composition. In 2021, Garland released “Harp & Sol,” an art film and music composition focusing on environmental racism in Dallas and Black feminism. She also co-produced the film and composed music for Their Lives Mattered: A Dialogue Honoring Stolen Lives by Dallas Law Enforcement.

Garland is the creator, executive producer, writer, and director of Behind the Strings: Amplifying Black Feminism in Guitar Culture, a documentary exploring Black women’s experiences and representation within guitar culture. The film received Best Documentary Short at the Urban Arts Film Festival in 2025 and Best Documentary at the Texas Short Film Festival in Austin in 2026. It has also been screened and presented through cultural spaces and festivals in Dallas, Austin, New York, and New Orleans.

The film grew into the Behind the Strings Music Symposium, which Garland created to bring musicians, educators, students, and community members together around Black women’s contributions to guitar culture. The 2026 symposium in Dallas incorporated music education, performance, film, conversation, and recognition of Black women musicians.

Garland’s ongoing exploration of Black string traditions also informs the Unstrung Gourd Project, an interdisciplinary project connecting the African origins and Black American history of the banjo with contemporary music education, gardening, instrument making, film, and performance. Based at Bonton Farms in South Dallas, the project follows the process of growing bottle gourds and transforming them into playable banjos, documenting the journey from planting the seed to sound.

Through the Unstrung Gourd Project, Garland has collaborated with the Black Banjo Reclamation Project through banjo study groups in Texas and beyond, connecting her work with a broader community engaged in the study, practice, and reclamation of Black banjo traditions. The Unstrung Gourd Project produced its first gourd banjos in 2026 through collaborations with instrument makers and continues to develop as a multidisciplinary exploration of land, history, sound, and Black string traditions.

As a recording musician, Garland’s work extends beyond her solo catalog. She was featured on the Ataraxia Trio’s +2 album Nights Enter, released on Ayler Records in March 2021. She was also featured on the title track of the Billboard-charting Truth to Power Project, a local fundraising initiative released on Record Store Day in June 2021. Garland is the featured harpist on These Machines Are Winning’s Slaves for Gods album as well as Sunshine Village’s The Buffalo Trees Saved the Children of the Sun.

Garland has partnered with She Shreds Media, has been featured in Guitar Girl Magazine and Kyser Presents Locals, and has worked with D’Addario to support music education through Swan Strings. She also sponsored Deep Ellum 100’s Sounds of Deep Ellum vinyl album celebrating the history and musical culture of the Dallas neighborhood.

Garland’s contributions to music and the Dallas arts community have earned recognition locally and nationally. In October 2024, she received the Visit Dallas Maverick, Can-Do Spirit Award for Arts & Entertainment. She was recognized as a Visit Dallas Power Player in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of Modern Luxury Magazine and received Chase Bank’s 2023 Entreprenista of the Year Award in May 2024. In 2023, Garland appeared on the covers of Guitar Girl Magazine and Dallas Weekly.

Garland was also presented with Wild Turkey’s Local Legend Award in Nashville by Creative Director Matthew McConaughey for her work keeping music alive in Dallas.

Central to Garland’s impact as a Texas musician is her commitment to creating opportunities for others. She is President and Founding Director of Swan Strings, a Dallas-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides free music education, community concerts, and music-in-care programming to North Texas individuals and communities without access. Founded by Garland as a community guitar program in 2017 and established as a nonprofit in 2019, Swan Strings now serves approximately 1,200 participants annually through programs across Dallas.

Through Swan Strings, Garland has developed free guitar programs in South Dallas, Oak Cliff, East Dallas, and West Dallas; partnerships with schools, libraries, recreation centers, and cultural centers; music programming for seniors; and music-in-care services for healthcare settings. Her work has placed particular emphasis on creating access for communities historically underrepresented in traditional music education.

Garland also serves as Executive Director of Girls Rock Dallas, an organization dedicated to empowering girls, women, trans, and gender-expansive individuals through music education. Through its annual summer programming and year-round initiatives, Girls Rock Dallas provides opportunities for young musicians to learn instruments, collaborate, form bands, create music, and perform.

Her leadership has extended throughout the arts community. Garland has served on the boards of Decolonizing the Music Room, Friends of WRR 101.1 FM, and Girls Rock Camp Alliance. She has also served on the millennial board of The Black Academy of Arts & Letters, the auxiliary board of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, and the Arts Council for Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. She participated in the 2023–2024 Racial Equity Now cohort at Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation.

Across her recordings, live performances, compositions, films, experimental instruments, music education programs, and community-based projects, Jess Garland has developed a body of work deeply connected to Dallas and the broader Texas music community. From her debut solo album GLOW and innovative use of harp and guitar to her exploration of Black string traditions and creation of pathways for emerging musicians, Garland’s work reflects an ongoing commitment to musical experimentation, cultural history, education, and ensuring that future generations have opportunities to make music in Texas.