Rhiannon Giddens

Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 21, 1977, folk, country and blues musician Rhiannon Giddens is best known for her participation in the retro band Carolina Chocolate Drops, and for the career she subsequently led under her own name. A banjo player and fiddler, she won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album with the band for Genuine Negro Jig (2010) and collaborated with The New Basement Tapes, before releasing her debut solo EP We Rise (2014), followed by the T-Bone Burnett-produced full-length Tomorrow Is My Turn (2015), which topped the Billboard folk charts. Two years later, Freedom Highway, featuring original tracks and covers by Mississippi John Hurt, Roebuck Staples and Richard Fariña, is nominated for an Americana Music Awards & Honors. A guest at the Jazzfest festival in 2016 and 2017, her performances led to live recordings, before she teamed up with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi on There Is No Other (2019), produced by Joe Henry, then They're Calling Me Home (2021), which earned her her first solo Grammy Award. After collaborations with guitarist Bill Frisell on "Julie's Aria" and cellist Yo-Yo Ma on "Build a House" in 2022 comes You're the One (2023). The same year, her opera Omar, written with Michael Abels, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Appointed director of the Ojai Music Festival, Rihannon Giddens reunites with Justin Robinson, from her former band, for the album of old covers What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow (2025).

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