May 9,
2023, Greensboro,
NC – The Carolina Theatre
of Greensboro, Inc. is pleased to announce Rhiannon Giddens in concert at the
Carolina Theatre on Thursday, September 28, 2023. Tickets will go on sale to
the public Friday, May 19, at 10:00 am.Rhiannon’s
biggest headlining tour to date continues into next spring and includes performances
at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, NYC’s Beacon Theatre, LA’s Ace Theater, and
London’s Barbican Centre.
Giddens’ You’re the One will
be released August 18 on Nonesuch Records. The album is the GRAMMY, MacArthur and
Pulitzer-winning singer, composer, and instrumentalist’s third solo studio album
and her first of all original songs; her last solo album was 2017’s critically
acclaimed Freedom Highway. This collection of 12 songs written over
the course of Giddens’ career bursts with life-affirming energy, drawing from
the folk music that she knows so deeply, as well as its pop descendants. The
album was produced by Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Alicia Keys, Valerie
June, Tank and the Bangas) and recorded at Criteria Recording Studios in Miami
with a band composed of Giddens’s closest musical collaborators from the past
decade alongside musicians
from Splash’s own Rolodex, topped off with a horn section,
making an impressive ten- to twelve-person ensemble.
It was also announced yesterday that Giddens
has been awarded
the Pulitzer Prize
in Music for the opera Omar,
which she co-wrote with Michael Abels (Get
Out, Nope).
Omar, based on the
autobiography of an enslaved Muslim man, Omar Ibn Said, who lived in Charleston, SC, in the 19th century,
made its world premiere last year at Spoleto
Festival and has been performed at LA Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and North
Carolina Arts, with San Francisco Opera scheduled for this November.
Giddens
has also announced the biggest headlining shows of her career, including
performances at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in September, plus the Barbican Centre in London, the Beacon Theatre
in New York City, and the Ace Theater in Los
Angeles next spring. See
below for
her full itinerary.
The first
single from the album – its title
track – is also available today. “You’re the One”
was inspired by a moment Giddens had with her son not long after he was born
(he's now ten years old, and she has a fourteen-year-old daughter as well).
"Your life has changed
forever, and you don't know it until
you're in the middle of it and it
hits you," Giddens says. "I held his little cheek up to my face, and
was just reminded, 'Oh my God, my children—they have every bit of my
heart.'" Listen to “You’re the One” here: https://rhiannongiddens.lnk.to/youretheone
iddens made You’re the One with some of her closest musical
collaborators from the past decade, including her partner,
Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, plus multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell, bassist
Jason Sypher, and Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu. The album features electric and upright bass,
conga, Cajun and Piano accordions, guitars, a Western string section, and Miami
horns, among other instruments, capturing the inclusive spirit that channels
through all of her work.
"I
hope that people just hear American music,"
Giddens says. "Blues, jazz, Cajun, country, gospel, and rock—it's
all there. I like to be where it meets organically. They're fun songs, and I wanted them to
have as much of a chance as they could to reach people who might dig them but
don't know anything about what I do. If they're introduced to me through
this record, they might go listen to other music
I've made and make some new discoveries.”
You’re
the One opens with "Too Little,
Too Late, Too Bad," an R&B blast
(complete with background
"shoops" and horns) that takes a titan for inspiration. "I
listened to a bunch of Aretha Franklin, and then turned
to fellow Aretha-nut Dirk Powell and said, ‘Let’s
write a song she might have sung!'" Giddens recalls. Her danceable,
vivacious tribute to Franklin's sound is a vocal showcase, spotlighting her
soaring high notes and nearly-growling low ones.
Another highlight, "If
You Don't Know How Sweet It Is," intentionally puts an edgier
spin on the sass of Dolly Parton's early work.
One of the album's
most powerful moments
is "Another Wasted Life," inspired
by the tragic story
of Kalief Browder,
who was incarcerated on Rikers Island
for three years without trial. The lone featured guest
on the album is Jason
Isbell on “Yet to Be,” the
story of a Black woman and an Irish man falling in love in America.
As Pitchfork once said, “few artists are so
fearless and so ravenous in their exploration”—a journey that has led to NPR
naming her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century
and to American Songwriter calling
her “one of the most important musical minds currently walking the planet.”
Giddens’ previous album They're Calling
Me Home won the GRAMMY for Best Folk Album in 2022, making her a two-time
winner and eight-time nominee. She
also had her PBS’ Great Performances debut
with the Nashville Ballet in Black Lucy
and the Bard, which she composed and performed the music for with Francesco
Turrisi, and released a children's book inspired by a song she wrote for
Juneteenth called Build A House. She
is also the creative director of the Silkroad Ensemble, is this year’s musical
director of the Ojai Festival, created a 10-part video series about the banjo
on Wondrium, and is hosting a new
series on PBS this summer called My Music. Giddens has
collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Elvis Costello and Daniel Lanois, appeared on the
Kennedy Center Awards for Joan Baez, and has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, CBS
Saturday Morning, and the recent GRAMMY Salute to Paul Simon on CBS.
TOUR DATES:
May 11: Union Chapel,
London, UK~
May 12: Saint Andrews
& Blackfriars Hall at Norfolk
& Norwich Festival,
Norwich, UK~
May 13: Birmingham
Town Hall, Birmingham, England~
May 14: Saffron Hall,
Saffron Walden, UK~
May 26: Our Common
Nature: An Appalachian Celebration, Knoxville, TN
May 27: Bijou
Theatre, Knoxville, TN%
June 8-11: Ojai Festival, Ojai, CA~
July 6: Festival dei Due Mondi,
Spoleto, Italy~
July 12: Umbria Jazz,
Perugia, Italy~
July 15: Pori Jazz
Festival, Pori, FI$
July 17: Wigmore
Hall, London, UK$
September 13:
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA^
September 14: The
Sheldon, St. Louis, MO^
September 15: Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN^
September 17:
Athenaeum Center, Chicago, IL*
September 18:
Michigan Theatre, Ann Arbor, MI*
September 19: St. Cecilia
Music Center, Grand
Rapids, MI^
September 20: Royal
Conservatory, Toronto, ON^
September 22: House
of Blues, Boston, MA^
September
23: University of Maine, Orono, ME^
September 24: FreshGrass MASS MoCa Festival, North Adams, MA
September 26: Keswick
Theater, Philadelphia, PA^
September 27: University of Maryland, College
Park, MD^
September 28: Carolina Theatre, Greensboro, NC^
September 30: University of North Carolina
at Wilmington, Wilmington, NC^
October 1: Modlin
Center at University of Richmond, Richmond, VA+
October 2: Paramount
Theatre, Charlottesville, VA*
November 17: Zellerbach
Hall, Berkeley, CA@
February 21, 2024: Barbican
Centre, London, UK
March 16, 2024:
Beacon Theatre, New York, NY
April 25, 2024: Ace
Theatre, Los Angeles, CA
~with Francesco Turrisi
$with Christian
McBride & Francesco
Turrisi
%with Dirk Powell & Justin Robinson^with
Adia Victoria
*with Charly Lowry
+with The Legendary Ingramettes
@Silkroad Ensemble
with Rhiannon Giddens https://shorefire.com/roster/rhiannon-giddens https://rhiannongiddens.com/
For more information, please contact Chris Taillie, Erica Goldish and Matt Hanks at Shore Fire Media.
Tickets to all shows in the Carolina Theatre’s Betty & Ben Cone,
Jr. Auditorium and in The Crown at the Carolina are available online at
CarolinaTheatre.com, or through the theatre box office at 336-333-2605. The box
office is open from noon until 3:00 pm Monday through Friday and before show
times.
Presenting Arts, Preserving History, Promoting Community.
Carolina Theatre
. 310 S. Greene Street . Greensboro,
NC 27401 . CarolinaTheatre.com