Name: American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens
Start: 2023-11-17T20:00:00
Location: University of California, Berkeley

Rhiannon Giddens

Sandeep Das

Mazz  Swift

Wu Man

Haruka Fujii

Francesco Turrisi

Shawn Conley

Michi Wiancko

Kaoru Watanabe

Pura Fé Crescioni

Karen Ouzounian

Niwel Tsumbu

Yazhi Guo

Cal Performances

Silkroad Ensemble

In the stirring and eclectic presentation, This Land, celebrated pianist, NPR host, and California native Lara Downes welcomes an all-star cast of collaborators for a program of classical and popular music that explores the richness and complexity of the American experience.

Lara Downes and Friends

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