Carnegie Hall

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-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, and she has been nominated for seven additional Grammys for her work as a soloist and collaborator. She most recently won the 2022 Grammy in the Best Folk Album category for They’re Calling Me Home, her collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. The 12-track album was recorded 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’s 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, served as a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist, 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 News Sunday Morning, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and NPR’s Fresh Air, among many others.

Giddens is featured in Ken Burns’s Country Music series, which aired on PBS in 2019, where she speaks 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, which tells stories of historic Black womanhood and survival.

Named artistic director of Silkroad in 2020, Giddens is developing a number of new programs for the organization, including one inspired by the history of the American transcontinental railroad and the cultures and music of its builders. She recently wrote the music for an original ballet, Lucy Negro Redux, for Nashville Ballet (premiered in 2019), and the libretto and music for an original opera, Omar, based on the autobiography of the enslaved man Omar Ibn Said for the Spoleto USA Festival (premiered in 2022).

As an actor, Giddens had a featured role on the television series Nashville.

Tuscarora/Taíno indigenous activist, singer-songwriter, and storyteller Pura Fé is known for her distinct, soulful vocals and for breathing life into several musical genres. As an activist and cultural leader, she has combated the erasure of Native culture by restoring traditions, building community, fighting corporate takeover of Native land, and giving a voice to those facing social injustice.

As the founding member of the internationally renowned Native American women’s a cappella trio Ulali, Pura Fé helped to create a movement across Native American tribal nations, empowering Native women and building a bridge for Native music into the mainstream. Pura Fé’s solo career has produced six studio albums with her Native blues and lap-steel slide guitar. While touring Europe with Music Maker Blues Revue, she won the Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros for Best World Album in 2006 and a Native American Music Award for Best Female Artist the same year. Pura Fé and Ulali appeared in and consulted for the Rezolution Pictures documentary RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World, which won first place at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Today, Pura Fé lives in Canada and is writing a film for Rezolution Pictures. She is also working with Canadian First Nations dance and theater troops while recording a new album.

Multi-percussionist Haruka Fujii has won international acclaim for her interpretation of contemporary music, having commissioned and performed numerous works from luminary composers. She has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras, including the Munich Philharmonic, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Nationale de Lyon, and NHK Symphony Orchestra. She performs with her mother, Mustuko, and sister Rika—both percussionists—as the Utari Duo and Fujii Trio. Her first solo recording, Ingredients, was released in 2013 by New Focus Recordings.

Edinburgh-born harpist and composer Maeve Gilchrist has been credited as an innovator on her native instrument, and taken the Celtic (lever) harp to new levels of performance and visibility. She tours internationally as a solo artist, including duo projects with percussive dancer Nic Gareiss, an electronics-based collaboration with Nashville-based bass player and producer Viktor Krauss, as a member of the Grammy-nominated Silkroad Ensemble, and as part of the multidisciplinary quartet Edges of Light. She has performed and recorded with such luminaries as Darol Anger, Yo-Yo Ma, Frankie Gavin, Esperanza Spalding, Kathy Mattea, and Solas. As a composer, Gilchrist straddles the worlds of folk and classical with pieces that include her original concerto for symphony orchestra and harp (a co-commission with Luke Benton); a three-movement Samuel Beckett–inspired piece for harp, string quartet, and sound samples that was premiered at the Edinburgh International Harp Festival in 2018; and other works for harp ensembles, strings, and small ensembles. She is a visiting artist at the Berklee College of Music and has had instructional books published by Hal Leonard and 80 Days Publishing. Gilchrist has released a number of albums on the Adventure Music label and has been a featured soloist on the DreamWorks soundtrack How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Her most recent independently released album, The Harpweaver, was described by The Irish Times as “buoyant, sprightly, and utterly beguiling ... a snapshot of a musician at the top of her game.” 

Praised for her “radiant” and “expressive” performances (The New York Times), cellist Karen Ouzounian is a winner of the S&R Foundation’s 2016 Washington Award and at home in diverse musical settings. She is a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet, which was awarded the grand prize at the 2018 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition and first prize at the 2017 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition. Aizuri was string quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its 2017–2018 season. Its debut album, Blueprinting, was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2018. Ouzounian’s commitment to adventurous repertoire and the collaborative process has led to her membership in the Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry and the critically acclaimed new-music collective counter)induction. She has performed internationally with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and The Knights, soloed with the Orlando Philharmonic and Philharmonic Orchestra of Santiago, toured with Musicians from Marlboro, and given recitals at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts. Born to Armenian parents in Toronto, Ouzounian holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees from The Juilliard School, where she was a student of Timothy Eddy. 

Mazz Swift is a composer, conductor, singer, bandleader, educator, and Juilliard-trained violinist. She has performed on many of the world’s greatest stages. As composer, her works include commissions by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and Blaffer Foundation. As an educator, Swift has performed and taught workshops in free improvisation and “conduction” (conducted improvisation) on six continents, and is a performing member and teaching artist with the acclaimed Silkroad Ensemble. She is also a Carnegie Hall teaching artist, where she writes and records lullabies with incarcerated mothers and mothers-to-be at Rikers Island, and coaches men at Sing Sing Correctional Facility on string studies and composition.

Improvisation is a through line in Swift’s practice across genres and instrumental configurations. She is a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, continually creating orchestral compositions that involve conduction, and solo works that are centered around protest and freedom songs, spirituals, and the Ghanaian concept of Sankofa: looking back to learn how to move forward. In February 2020, Swift was named a United States Artist Fellow.

Pipa virtuoso and composer Wu Man is an ambassador of Chinese music, creating a new role for her lute-like instrument in both traditional and contemporary music. Brought up in the Pudong school of pipa playing, Wu Man became the first person to receive a master’s degree in pipa performance from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She is a frequent collaborator with the Kronos and Shanghai quartets, and has performed in recital and as soloist with major orchestras around the world, regularly premiering new works. Wu Man has appeared on more than 40 albums, including a Grammy winner with the Silkroad Ensemble and five additional Grammy nominees. She was named Musical America’s 2013 Instrumentalist of the Year, but the best measure of her achievement is that her instrument, which dates back 2,000 years, is no longer an exotic curiosity.