The acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens uses her art to excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present. A MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, Giddens co-founded the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, and she has been nominated for six additional Grammys for her work as a soloist and collaborator. Giddens’s latest 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. Giddens is a Greensboro native who studied opera at Oberlin and UNC Greensboro, where she played Beth in the North Carolina premiere of Mark Adamo’s Little Women and the title role in Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah; both productions won first place for the UNCG Opera Theatre in the National Opera Association’s Opera Production Competition. Giddens has performed as a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Toledo Symphony, and more. Giddens hosts a hit podcast series called “Aria Code,” produced by The Metropolitan Opera and WNYC, in which she discusses one aria and its themes in each episode. She is also the Artistic Director of Silkroad and has composed and written the libretto for a new original opera, Omar, set to premiere at Spoleto Festival 2022. As an actor, Giddens had a featured role on the television series Nashville.
