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Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi

Saturday, February 20, 2021 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

LIVE STREAM

Rhiannon Giddens
Francesco Turrisi

Tickets

Watch the performance via Live Stream: $15

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The acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens uses her art to excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present. Her lifelong mission is to lift up people of color whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased, and to work toward a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins. Pitchfork has said of her work, “few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration,” and Smithsonian Magazine calls her “an electrifying artist who brings alive the memories of forgotten predecessors, white and black.”

A MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, Giddens co-founded the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops; she has been nominated for six additional Grammys for her work as a soloist and collaborator. She was most recently nominated for her collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, there is no Other (2019). Giddens’s forthcoming album, They’re Calling Me Home, is a twelve-track album, recorded with Turrisi in Ireland during the recent lockdown; it speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death, which has been a tragic reality for so many during the COVID-19 crisis.  

Among her many diverse career highlights, Giddens has performed for the Obamas at the White House, served as a Carnegie Hall Perspectives curator, and received an inaugural Legacy of Americana Award from Nashville’s National Museum of African American in partnership with the Americana Music Association. Her critical acclaim includes in-depth profiles by CBS Sunday Morning, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and NPR’s Fresh Air, among many others. 

Giddens is featured in Ken Burns’s Country Music series, which aired on PBS in 2019, where she speaks about the African American origins of country music. She is also a member of the band Our Native Daughters with three other black female banjo players, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russel, and Amythyst Kiah; produced their debut album Songs of Our Native Daughters (2019), which tells stories of historic black womanhood and survival. 

Named Artistic Director of Silkroad Ensemble in 2020, Giddens is developing a number of new programs for that ensemble, including The American Silkroad, an exploration of the music of the American transcontinental railroad and its builders. She recently wrote the music for an original ballet, Lucy Negro Redux (the first ballet written by women of color for a black prima ballerina), and the libretto and music for an original opera, Omar, based on the autobiography of the enslaved man Omar Ibn Said.

As an actor, Giddens had a featured role on the television series Nashville.

Music Worcester, Inc.

319 Main Street | Mechanics Hall | Worcester MA | 01608-1511

…one of American music’s most vitally prolific artists…

Rolling Stone

Rhiannon Giddens

Multi Instrumentalist

Francesco Turrisi

Multi Instrumentalist

Details

Date:
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Time:
2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Event Categories:
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Venue

LIVE STREAM
Concert can be viewed ONLY during the time indicated.