Born in Newberg, Oregon, on October 4, 1988, Jacob Jolliff is an American country, bluegrass and jazz mandolinist. He began playing mandolin at the age of seven, encouraged by his father, himself a bluegrass musician. From an early age, he performed at festivals and churches with a family bluegrass gospel group. At 18, he won a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied mandolin under John McGann. During his studies, he developed an eclectic approach to mandolin, blending bluegrass, jazz, Celtic music and improvisation. In 2008, he joined New England-based roots band Joy Kills Sorrow, with whom he toured the USA, Canada and Europe. In 2012, he won the National Mandolin Championship in Winfield, Kansas, one of the most prestigious competitions for this instrument. In 2014, he joined the Yonder Mountain String Band, a major figure in progressive bluegrass, with whom he toured intensively and recorded several albums until his departure in 2019. He then devoted himself to his own project, The Jacob Jolliff Band, an ensemble of virtuoso musicians performing a repertoire of instrumental compositions, traditional songs and revisited covers. Solo or with his band, he released the instrumental albums Instrumentals Vol. 1 (2018), Standards Vol. 1 (2021), The Jacob Jolliff Band (2022), Our Delight (2022), Standards on Snare, Mandolin, and Bass Clarinet (2023) and Instrumentals, Vol. 2: Mandolin Mysteries (2024), which reached No. 8 in the bluegrass charts.
