RHIANNon giddens
ABOUT this week’s guest:
credit: Karen Cox
The last time Rhiannon Giddens was on the show in 2023 she talked about the importance of not just doing what you are good at, but making sure you are going where you are needed. She has spent the last two decades doing just that, and has carved her own path that both honors lineage and creates new ones for generations to come. The journey she has been on - from opera student at Oberlin College to becoming a 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning opera composer - is far from a linear one, and encompasses a multitude of artistic achievements, accolades, awards, and honors that have been accumulating since the early 2000’s when Rhiannon shifted her attention from opera to the fiddle and banjo, playing in a celtic band, and reclaiming the banjo and the roots of American folk music with her Grammy-winning black string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops. After five albums with the Chocolate Drops, Rhiannon went solo, and subsequently released three multi-Grammy nominated, and Americana Award-winning albums, along with a ton more awards and critical acclaim too long to list here. In 2015, she put out her debut EP Factory Girl and full length debut Tomorrow Is My Turn which paid tribute to several of her SHEROES. Next came 2017’s Freedom Highway, and that same year, Rhiannon was awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant. The next few years saw a meteoric rise in projects and expansion into every medium imaginable. She performed with orchestras, and founded the supergroup Our Native Daughters and co-produced their 2019 album Songs of Our Native Daughters for the Smithsonian Folkways label. She composed for ballet and film. Rhiannon also put out two albums with Francesco Turrisi - There Is No Other in 2019, and the Grammy-winning 2021 album They’re Calling Me Home. In 2020 she became artistic director of Silkroad, taking over for Yo-Yo Ma. She hosts her own show on PBS, My Music with Rhiannon Giddens, and has hosted a podcast with the Metropolitan Opera called Aria Code. In 2023 she released the Grammy-nominated album You Are The One, her first of all original material, and as you will hear today, she hasn’t stopped moving and lending her talents to new places where she is needed. Her seventh album, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, was just released and in many ways, embodies the many roads that she has been on
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