Noah Kahan leads the way for Grammy Award nominees with Vermont connections

Breakout singer-songwriter Noah Kahan leads the list of former or current Vermont residents nominated Friday for Grammy Awards.

Kahan, who grew up in Strafford, is among the candidates for one of the music award’s top honors, Best New Artist (a category that might surprise Vermonters who’ve been following Kahan’s musical development for the past half-dozen years or so). Kahan has exploded on the pop-music scene this year thanks to “Stick Season,” the Vermont-inspired album he released in late 2022 that has reached the coveted platinum-sales mark.

Kahan’s contenders for the Best New Artist award are Gracie Abrams, Fred again.., Ice Spice, Jelly Roll, Coco Jones, Victoria Monet and The War and Treaty. The Grammy Awards will be announced Sunday, Feb. 4, in a ceremony broadcast by CBS and streamed on Paramount+.

Others with Vermont connections nominated for Grammy Awards are:

Bernie Sanders

The U.S. senator from Vermont,  the former Burlington mayor and two-time contender for the Democratic nomination for president, is among finalists in the category Best Audio, Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording for his 2023 work “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.” Sanders was previously nominated, but did not win, in the same category for his 2016 book “Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In.”

Caroline Rose

The Austin-based musician who lived for many years in Burlington has been nominated as art director for Best Recording Package for the album “The Art of Forgetting,” which came out March 24 and was written largely in Burlington by Rose. On social media following the nomination, Rose gave “a round of applause for my brilliant friends who helped me bring this crazy idea to life, and to my parents (both book cover designers) who raised me to 100% judge a book by its cover.” The album cover that shows a blindfolded Rose sitting calmly in a room on fire represents the artist’s first Grammy nomination.

säje 

The jazz-inspired quartet including Jericho native Erin Bentlage is again nominated in the category of Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals, which the then-brand-new group was selected for but did not win in 2021. Bentlage told the Burlington Free Press that year that the “shapes and colors” of her arrangements are inspired in part by the work of Chopin and Debussy she heard as a dancer at the Vermont Ballet School in Essex Junction. She shares the nomination for the song “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” with fellow säje members Sara Gazarek, Johnaye Kendrick and Amanda Taylor as well as featured musician Jacob Collier.

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.