Sheila Kay Adams
Our Common Nature Presents Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson with Special Guest Sheila Kay AdamsSaturday, May 27, 2023
Yo-Yo Ma has partnered with Big Ears to design a week of cultural experiences that lift the myriad voices of Appalachia – Indigenous, European, Latinx, Black, and beyond – and gather local artists, scientists, leaders, and community members in an exploration of our common future, with nature as our guide.
The culmination of this week-long gathering will take place in Knoxville’s World’s Fair Park, where Yo-Yo Ma will be joined by special musical guests including Rhiannon Giddens, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile, along with storytellers, poets, puppets, and dancers in a concert experience like none other. The festival grounds at the World’s Fair Park will be a carefully curated, multi-faceted Appalachian celebration of its own, highlighting some of the region’s very best food and arts and crafts, along with storytelling events, square dancing, music making and more.
These events continue Ma’s multi-year, multi-location project, Our Common Nature, which has brought together communities from Maine to Hawai‘i to explore the many ways in which culture connects us to the natural world and to one another.
About Rhiannon Giddens:
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. She most recently won a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for They're Calling Me Home, which she made with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. Giddens is now a two-time winner and eight-time Grammy nominee for her work as a soloist and collaborator.
They’re Calling Me Home was released by Nonesuch last April and has been widely celebrated by the NY Times, NPR Music, NPR, Rolling Stone, People, Associated Press and far beyond, with No Depression deeming it “a near perfect album…her finest work to date.” Recorded over six days in the early phase of the pandemic in a small studio outside of Dublin, Ireland - where both Giddens and Turrisi live - They’re Calling Me Home manages to effortlessly blend the music of their native and adoptive countries: America, Italy, and Ireland. The album speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death.
Giddens’ 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. 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.”
Among her many diverse career highlights, Giddens has performed for the Obamas at the White House 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 was featured in Ken Burns’s Country Music series, which aired on PBS, where she spoke 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.
Giddens is in the midst of a tremendous 2022. She recently announced the publication of her first book, Build a House (October 2022), Lucy Negro Redux, the ballet Giddens wrote the music for, had its premiere at the Nashville Ballet (premiered in 2019 and toured in 2022), and the libretto and music for Giddens’ original opera, Omar, based on the autobiography of the enslaved man Omar Ibn Said, premiered at the Spoleto USA Festival in May. Giddens is also curating a four-concert Perspectives series as part of Carnegie Hall’s 2022–2023 season. Named Artistic Director of Silkroad Ensemble in 2020, Giddens is developing a number of new programs for that ensemble, including one inspired by the history of the American transcontinental railroad and the cultures and music of its builders.
As an actor, Giddens had a featured role on the television series Nashville.
We reserve the right to revoke tickets sold to a broker or unauthorized third party. If you are holding a revoked ticket, you will not be admitted and will not receive a refund.
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