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Rhiannon Giddens
Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning folk musician
Tuesday • February 16, 2027 • 7:30 pm
Main Auditorium
Expect rock-concert sound levels
Rhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable. A two-time Grammy Award-winning singer and multi-instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” Grant Recipient, Pulitzer Prize winner, and composer of opera, ballet and film, Giddens has centered her work around the mission of lifting up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, as well as advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins through art.
Giddens has released three albums under her own name and two in collaboration with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, all on Nonesuch Records. American Railroad, her first album in collaboration with the Silkroad Ensemble, was released in November 2024, and her most recent album, a collaboration with Justin Robinson called What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow, was released in 2025.
A founding member of the landmark Black string-band Carolina Chocolate Drops and the all-female banjo supergroup Our Native Daughters, Giddens is as much a curator as a creator. She is the current artistic director of the Yo-Yo Ma-founded Silkroad Ensemble, hosts a TV show on PBS, My Music with Rhiannon Giddens, and has hosted two podcasts (Aria Code from New York City’s NPR affiliate station WQXR, which ran for three seasons, and American Railroad from Silkroad).
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Giddens has published two children’s books and written and performed music for the soundtrack of Red Dead Redemption II, one of the best-selling video games of all time. She appeared as a recurring cast member on ABC’s hit drama Nashville and as a music-history expert on Ken Burns’ Country Music series on PBS. In 2025, she launched her own music festival in Durham, NC, called Biscuits & Banjos, to celebrate Black culture outside the mainstream.
As Pitchfork once said, “few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration”—a journey that has led to NPR naming her one of its “25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century” and to American Songwriter calling her “one of the most important musical minds currently walking the planet.”
