RHIANNON GIDDENS

 

                                                      

Rhiannon Giddens (born February 21, 1977) is an American musician. She is a founding member of the country, blues and old-time music band Carolina Chocolate Drops, where she is the lead singer, fiddle player, and banjo player.

Giddens is a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, an alumna of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics,and a 2000 graduate of Oberlin Conservatory at Oberlin College, where she studied opera.

In addition to her work with the Grammy-winning Chocolate Drops, Giddens has released two solo albums: Tomorrow Is My Turn (2015) and Freedom Highway (2017). Her latest album, There Is No Other (2019), is a collaboration with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. She appears in the Smithsonian Folkways collection documenting Mike Seeger's final trip through Appalachia in 2009, Just Around The Bend: Survival and Revival in Southern Banjo Styles – Mike Seeger’s Last Documentary (2019). In 2014, she participated in the T Bone Burnett-produced project titled The New Basement Tapes along with several other musicians, which set a series of recently discovered Bob Dylan lyrics to newly composed music. The resulting album, Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, was a top-40 Billboard album.

Rhiannon Giddens

at Rudolstadt, 2015

In 2005, Giddens, who at that time was spending time competing in Scottish music competitions (specializing in the Gaelic lilting tradition, also known as mouth music), attended the Black Banjo Then and Now Gathering, in Boone, North Carolina. There she met Dom Flemons and Sule Greg Wilson. The three started playing together professionally as a "postmodern string band", Sankofa Strings.During that same time period, Giddens was also a regular caller at local contra dances and featured in a Celtic music band called Gaelwynd. Later in 2005, after both Gaelwynd and Sankofa Strings had released CD albums, Giddens and Flemons teamed up with other musicians and expanded the Sankofa Strings sound into what was to become the Grammy winning Carolina Chocolate Drops.

In 2007, Giddens contributed fiddle, banjo, "flat-footin'" dancing and additional vocals to Talitha MacKenzie's album Indian Summer.

Performing as a soprano, Giddens and mezzo-soprano Cheryse McLeod Lewis formed a duo called Eleganza to release a CD in 2009. Because I Knew You... consists of classical, religious, theater, and movie music. Giddens and Lewis were middle school classmates who reconnected after college while working in the same office. The friends started singing together in 2003, but did not begin recording until 2008.

As of November 12, 2013, Giddens became the only original member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

In 2013, Giddens began pushing further into her solo career. Giddens participated in "Another Day, Another Time", a concert inspired by the Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis.Many critics have stated that Giddens had the best performance at what was called "the concert of the year". Late in 2013, Giddens contributed the standout a cappella track "We Rise" to the LP We Are Not For Sale: Songs of Protest by the NC Music Love Army – a collective of activist musicians from North Carolina founded by Jon Lindsay and Caitlin Cary. Giddens' protest song joins contributions from many other Carolina musical luminaries on the Lindsay-produced compilation (11/26/13 via Redeye Distribution), which was created to support the NC NAACP and the Moral Monday movement.

In early 2014 Giddens recorded for Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes alongside Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, Taylor Goldsmith and Jim James. The album was produced by T-Bone Burnett and is a compilation of partial, unreleased lyrics written by Bob Dylan.

In February 2015, Giddens released her debut solo album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, on Nonesuch Records. Also produced by Burnett, the album includes songs made famous by Patsy Cline, Odetta, Dolly Parton, and Nina Simone, among others. The Wall Street Journal said the album "confirms the arrival of a significant talent whose voice and distinctive approach communicate the simmering emotion at the core of the songs." Additionally, the Los Angeles Times called the album "a collection that should solidify her status as one of the bright new lights in pop music."

In July 2015, she had a big stage at world music folk and dance festival at TFF Rudolstadt in Germany. Her performance was also broadcast live by the German national public radio Deutschlandfunk. Rhiannon appears on Jon Lindsay's single "Ballad of Lennon Lacy" (Redeye Distribution, August 21). The song tackles the mysterious hanging death of Lennon Lacy, a black teen from rural Bladenboro, North Carolina. The case is currently under investigation by the FBI, and widely suspected to be a lynching.

On November 27, 2015, to coincide with the Black Friday Record Store Day event, Giddens released Factory Girl (EP) on Nonesuch Records, which contained music culled from the same T Bone Burnett–produced sessions that yielded Tomorrow Is My Turn. A digital version of Factory Girl was made available December 11, 2015. The sessions for the album and EP took place in Los Angeles and Nashville, with a multi-generational group of players assembled by Burnett. Musicians on Factory Girl include Burnett; fiddle player Gabe Witcher and double bassist Paul Kowert of Punch Brothers; percussionist Jack Ashford of Motown's renowned Funk Brothers; drummer Jay Bellerose; guitarist Colin Linden; veteran Nashville session bassist Dennis Crouch; and Giddens's Carolina Chocolate Drops touring band-mates, multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins and beat-boxer Adam Matta.

Rhiannon appeared on Jools Holland's Hootenanny on December 31, 2015, shown on BBC Two. She performed songs from her 2015 album Tomorrow Is My Turn, including "Waterboy" and a cover of "St James Infirmary Blues" with Tom Jones.

She was selected to take part in Transatlantic Sessions in January 2016. This collaboration between American and Celtic musicians is a coveted honor. The ensemble performed as part of Celtic Connections in Glasgow, and a short UK/Irish tour. Her performances on the tour included the stirring tribute to David Bowie "It Ain't Easy". Later in the year, Giddens became the first American to be honoured as Folk Singer of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Later in the year, it was also announced that she would be receiving the prestigious Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. Winning this award makes Giddens both the only woman and the only person of color to receive the prize in its six-year history. In 2016, it was also announced that Giddens and the Carolina Chocolate Drops would be inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.

In 2017, Giddens became only the fourth musician to perform at both the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals. Later that year, she delivered the keynote address at the World of Bluegrass Business Conference 2017. According to Bluegrass Today, "Giddens shattered long-held stereotypes...By the time she was done, she had systematically dismantled the myth of a homogenous Appalachia."  In June 2017, Giddens appeared in the multi award-winning documentary The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon, where she recorded "One Hour Mama" and English folk ballad "Pretty Saro", on the restored first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. Both performances were released on Music from The American Epic Sessions: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Upon hearing the playback of these direct-to-disc recordings, she exclaimed "you feel like your soul is coming out of the speaker."

In October 2017, Giddens was named one of the 2017 class of MacArthur "Genius" Fellows. The organization noted, "Giddens's drive to understand and convey the nuances, complexities, and interrelationships between musical traditions is enhancing our musical present with a wealth of sounds and textures from the past."  Rhiannon further demonstrated the broad range of her musical interests with several subsequent projects. In early November, she performed as a soprano with the Louisville Orchestra in Teddy Abrams' multimedia tribute to Muhammad Ali, The Greatest. A week later, she sang with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra for their live recording of American Originals: 1918, which explored the early development of jazz during the post WWI era. In January 2018, Giddens co-produced (with Dirk Powell) Songs of Our Native Daughters for Smithsonian Folkways. Written and recorded with fellow artists Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell, "The album confronts the ways we are culturally conditioned to avoid talking about America's history of slavery, racism, and misogyny."  Also in early 2018, the Nashville Ballet announced that Rhiannon Giddens has been commissioned to write the music for Lucy Negro, Redux, a new dance choreographed by artistic director, Paul Vasterling. Based on the book of the same name by Caroline Randall Williams, its premise is that Shakespeare's Dark Lady was of African descent. The ballet premiered in February 2019. Then in March 2018, Giddens fulfilled a previously announced engagement as guest curator for the Cambridge Folk Festival by inviting Peggy Seeger, Kaia Kater, Birds of Chicago, Amythyst Kiah, and Yola Carter to perform at the event.

Giddens recorded vocals for Silo Songs, an audio installation created by composer Brad Wells for Hancock Shaker Village. She contributed a song, "Mountain Hymn", to the popular video game Red Dead Redemption 2 which was released in October 2018. The song was written with Daniel Lanois. Beginning in December 2018, she is hosting a podcast called Aria Code with Rhiannon Giddens produced by the Metropolitan Opera and WQXR-FM. The program examines why individual arias have a lasting impact on audiences and how singers prepare to perform them.In 2019, Giddens released two studio albums: Songs of Our Native Daughters with Allison Russell, Leyla McCalla and Amythyst Kiah, and There Is No Other with Italian musician Francesco Turrisi.

For the 2020 Spoleto Festival USA, Rhiannon Giddens was commissioned to create an opera based on the autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, an enslaved Muslim-African man who was brought to Charleston, South Carolina in 1807. Giddens wrote the libretto and served as lead composer with help from co-composer Michael Abels. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world premiere of Omar was postponed until 2021. In July 2020, Giddens was named Artistic Director of the cross-cultural music organization Silkroad (arts organization). The position had been vacant since 2017 when Silkroad's founder, Yo-Yo Ma, stepped down.

On 17 August 2020, Giddens guest-hosted the BBC Radio 2 Blues Show whilst its regular host Cerys Matthews was on her holidays.

Giddens earned an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for her lasting impact on the UNCG community and work in music. She sang "Calling me Home" by Alice Gerrard at a virtual commencement after accepting the degree in December 2020.

Acting

In 2017 and 2018, Giddens appeared in the fifth and sixth seasons of the CMT's Nashville as Hannah Lee "Hallie" Jordan, a social worker and gospel singer who is a significant character in Juliette's storyline. Giddens appeared in 11 episodes and performed several songs that have been made available following each episode.

Personal life

Giddens is multiethnic in ancestry, from her European-American father (David Giddens) and her African- and Native-American mother (Deborah Jamieson), who met as college students in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina. She and her sister grew up in Greensboro and nearby rural Gibsonville. Her sister Lalenja Harrington is a director for Beyond Academics, a four-year certificate program supporting students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. A singer and songwriter herself, Harrington occasionally collaborates with her sister on musical projects.

Giddens married Irish musician Michael Laffan in 2007. They have a daughter born in 2009 and a son born in 2013; however, they had separated as of 2018. In 2019, Giddens was in a relationship with her musical partner Francesco Turrisi.They released an album together in May 2019, and as of 2020, they were still in a relationship and touring together. She has homes in Greensboro, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; and Limerick, Ireland.