Composer

Violinist

Expect the Unexpected: Step into adventure as the Symphony brings extraordinary, multisensory experiences to the underground club atmosphere of the SoundBox space.


EPSG:4326

Mazz Swift

Davies Symphony Hall

Under the leadership of 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner, the dynamic multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens, the Grammy-winning, genre-defying Silkroad Ensemble embarks on a new initiative that illuminates the impact of under-recognized voices in America’s expansion west. The project explores the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad through the contributions of African American, Chinese, Irish, Indigenous, and other communities, their cultures, and their music. Chinese traditional instruments like the guzheng, pipa, erhu, and qinqin are contrasted with the fiddle, bones, tambo, and banjo of Black musical traditions, and their Indigenous and Celtic counterparts. New compositions and commissions weave these disparate traditions together to tell a new version of the American story. As Giddens told the New York Times, “Silkroad has people from all over, and that’s what makes it such a great group to represent the American story, because that’s what the American story is. We are world music”.

American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens

University of California, Berkeley

American Railroad highlights the cultural diffusion and collaboration that resulted as African American, Chinese, Irish, and Native American communities made vital contributions to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens, the Grammy Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble recontextualizes the railroad through the sounds of the worlds that collided through its creation.

American Railroad

Stanford University

Silkroad’s newest initiative, American Railroad, illuminates the impact of African American, Chinese, Irish, and Native American communities on the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad and America’s Westward Expansion. Exploring the dissemination of cultures across the United States, the railroad was to North America what the Silk Road was to China, the Far East and Europe.

American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens1

Soka Performing Arts Center

American Railroad: Silkroad Ensemble With Rhiannon Giddens

As a social-impact organization and home to a Grammy Award-winning musical ensemble, Silkroad works to inspire collaboration in innovative ways that add more equity and justice into the world through the power of the arts. Today, under the leadership of Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens, Silkroad reaches new heights through a commitment to new music, a re-sparked mission towards cultural collaboration, and a reinvigorated focus to high-quality arts education that both reflects its mission and the times in which we live.

Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens

Balboa Theatre

A complete performance of Carlos Simon’s cycle Between Worlds, four solo string works placed in visual context by the remarkable paintings of Bill Traylor (ca. 1853-1949), chronicling nearly a century of Black American life.

Between Worlds

Ojai Valley School

Multi-Grammy nominated violinist/composer Curtis Stewart premieres new music with pianist and Kaufman Music Center Artist-in-Residence Aaron Diehl, Harlem Quartet and violin/vox/freestyle composition artist Mazz Swift.

Curtis Stewart – of Love / of time

Kaufman Music Center

This special concert presents Argentina-born American composer Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time, composed for a multicultural, multistylistic instrumental group of musicians that includes members of Silkroad Ensemble. Drawing powerfully on popular and folk-music styles, based on David Grossman’s experimental novel about parents’ grief at the loss of a child, Golijov’s urgently impactful piece is here presented in a semi-staged performance.

Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time1

Symphony Hall

Osvaldo Golijov blew open the boundaries between musical genres at the start of this century, with his influential, genre-defying La Pasión según San Marcos. A genius who embraces a wide-range of influences, Golijov’s newest dramatic work brings together Delta blues, Hebrew chant, Central Asian ballads and the mournful eloquence of Schubert. This is music for our time.

Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time

Hobby Center for the Performing Arts

For the second episode of her Close Quarters musical curation, composer Jessie Montgomery is working directly with Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard to craft an original work of video art incorporating the composer’s brilliant and eclectic program with cinematic footage of the orchestra.Isabel Leonard makes her directorial debut with this episode of Close Quarters.

Composer, Violinist

Mazz Swift

Events

Past events

8 - 9 Dec, 2023

Mazz Swift · San Francisco Symphony

Nov 17, 2023

American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens · Cal Performances

About

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