Rhiannon Giddens

On Sunday, October 9 at 3 p.m., musician Rhiannon Giddens will perform with her frequent collaborator Francesco Turrisi at McCarter Theatre.

Giddens, a MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, co-founded the Grammy-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 Turrisi, there is no Other (2019).

Giddens’ 12-track album They’re Calling Me Home, recorded with Turrisi in Ireland during the recent lockdown, 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.   

Giddens’s lifelong mission is to lift up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased, and to work toward a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins.

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 History 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 Russell, and Amythyst Kiah, and co-produced their debut album Songs of Our Native Daughters (2019), which tells stories of historic black womanhood and survival. 

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

For ticket information, visit mccarter.org.