, July 2015 Giddens is a 1995 alumna of the
North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in
Durham, North Carolina, and a 2000 graduate of
Oberlin Conservatory at
Oberlin College, where she studied opera. In 2005, Giddens attended the Black Banjo Then and Now Gathering in
Boone, North Carolina. At the time she was spending time participating in
Scottish traditional music competitions (specializing in the
Gaelic lilting tradition, also known as mouth music). There she met
Dom Flemons and Súle Greg Wilson. The three started playing together professionally as a "postmodern string band", Sankofa Strings. During the same 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 released albums, Giddens and Flemons teamed with other musicians and expanded the Sankofa Strings sound into what became 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 remaining original member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. In 2013, she began pushing further into a solo career. She participated in "Another Day, Another Time", a concert inspired by the
Coen brothers film
Inside Llewyn Davis. Many critics have said that Giddens had the best performance at what was called "the concert of the year". Late in 2013, she contributed the standout
a cappella track "We Rise" to the LP
We Are Not For Sale: Songs of Protest by the North Carolina 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 North Carolina NAACP and the
Moral Monday movement. In early 2014, she recorded
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. , July 2015 In February 2015, Giddens released her debut solo album,
Tomorrow Is My Turn, on
Nonesuch Records. Also produced by Burnett, the album contains songs made famous by
Patsy Cline,
Odetta,
Dolly Parton,
Nina Simone, and 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 performed at the
TFF Rudolstadt world music, folk and dance festival in Germany. Her performance was 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 southeast of
Lumberton, North Carolina. 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 which yielded
Tomorrow Is My Turn. A digital version of Factory Girl was made available December 11, 2015. The sessions for the album and EP were 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
The Funk Brothers; drummer
Jay Bellerose; guitarist
Colin Linden from
Toronto; veteran Nashville session bassist
Dennis Crouch; and Giddens's Carolina Chocolate Drops touring band-mates, multi-instrumentalist
Hubby Jenkins, and beat-boxer
Adam Matta. Giddens 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. In January 2016, she was selected to take part in
Transatlantic Sessions. The 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". On October 8, 2016, she was featured on
Austin City Limits. Later in 2016, Giddens became the first American to be honored as Folk Singer of the Year at the
BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and it was announced that she would be receiving the prestigious
Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. She was the first woman and first person of color to receive the prize. Also in 2016, it was 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 gave the keynote address at the World of Bluegrass Business Conference 2017. According to Bluegrass Today, "Giddens (has) 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. After hearing the playback of these direct-to-disc recordings, she said, "you feel like your soul is coming out of the speaker." She further demonstrated the broad range of her musical interests with several 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
Canadian singer
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 had 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. In March 2018, Giddens fulfilled a previously announced engagement as guest curator for the
Cambridge Folk Festival in
Cambridge, England 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. In December 2018, she began hosting a podcast called
Aria Code with Rhiannon Giddens produced by the
Metropolitan Opera and
WQXR-FM. The program is about individual arias having 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 in
Charleston, South Carolina, Giddens was commissioned to create an opera based on the
Arabic language autobiography of
Omar Ibn Said, a highly literate and cultured
Torodbe (Muslim cleric) from the
Fula people of modern
Senegal, who was enslaved in an intertribal war against the
Imamate of Futa Toro and brought aboard a slave ship to Charleston in 1807. She wrote the libretto and was the lead composer with help from co-composer
Michael Abels. Owing to the
COVID-19 pandemic, the world premiere of
Omar was postponed until 2022. It received the 2023
Pulitzer Prize in Music. In July 2020, Giddens was named artistic director of the cross-cultural music organization
Silkroad. The position had been vacant since 2017 when Silkroad's founder,
Yo-Yo Ma, stepped down. On , Giddens guest-hosted the
BBC Radio 2 Blues Show while its regular host
Cerys Matthews was on her holidays. Giddens was awarded an honorary
Doctor of Letters degree 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. In 2023, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music from
Princeton University. In 2023, Giddens joined the programming lineup at
Wondrium leading the series "The Banjo: Music, History and Heritage." In 2022, she was named the
musical director of the 2023
Ojai Music Festival. On 7th July 2024, she and her band headlined the Gate to Southwell Festival. == Scholarship on the Racial History of American Music ==