Bassist

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”.

EPSG:4326

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 Giddens

Soka Performing Arts Center

American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens1

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

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.

Shawn Conley

Bassist

Events

Nov 17, 2023

American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens · Cal Performances

Nov 15, 2023

American Railroad · Stanford Live

Nov 11, 2023

American Railroad: Silkroad Ensemble With Rhiannon Giddens · Soka Performing Arts Center

Nov 11, 2023

American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens1 · Philharmonic Society of Orange County

Nov 10, 2023

Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens · La Jolla Music Society

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