Rhiannon Giddens

Rhiannon Giddens will be at L’Alhambra in Paris on September 26, 2026. A singer and multi-instrumentalist, she blends banjo, violin and voice to revisit American popular music with the perspective of a historian and a contemporary sensibility. A two-time Grammy Award winner, a MacArthur Fellow and a Pulitzer Prize recipient for the opera Omar, she has, since her beginnings, highlighted repertoires and figures often sidelined—from African American string bands to folk and gospel anthems.

Co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Our Native Daughters, Giddens has carved out a singular path between original creations and reinterpreted material. As a solo artist she has released Tomorrow Is My Turn, Freedom Highway and You’re the One. With multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi she explored a transatlantic side on There Is No Other and They’re Calling Me Home. More recently she released American Railroad with the Silkroad Ensemble (2024) and, with Justin Robinson, What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow (2025).

On stage she assembles standards, original compositions and traditional tunes into a vivid narrative where old-time, bluegrass, blues, country, gospel, jazz and Celtic inflections answer and intertwine, driven by the pulse of the banjo and the momentum of the fiddle. An invitation to hear history differently, up close to the strings and the voice.