About
Rhiannon has had a fruitful period of collaboration with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. Called “a musical alchemist” by the Irish Times, Turrisi is a Turin-born musician whose Dublin base reflects his global sensibilities. Through a chance musical meet-up in Ireland, they found that Giddens’ 19th century American minstrel banjo tunes and Turrisi’s traditional Sicilian Tamburello (tambourine) rhythms fit very naturally together.
Their latest release, They’re Calling Me Home (Nonesuch, 2021), took home the GRAMMY Award for “Best Folk Album”. The twelve-track album was recorded with Turrisi in Ireland during the recent lockdown; it speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death, which has been a tragic reality for so many during the COVID-19 crisis.
Their GRAMMY-nominated 2019 album there is no Other is at once a condemnation of “othering” and a celebration of the spread of ideas, connectivity, and shared experience. Tracing the movement of instruments, sounds, and musical language back and forth from Africa, the Arab world, Europe, and the Americas, there is no Other illuminates the blossoming that's possible when culture flows freely between peoples and lands.
“The most distilled and sui generis display of the unique artistry that defines (Rhiannon Giddens’) still-blossoming career.”
“For an album recorded in only five days, it wallops with impact. Giddens is going supernova, and it’s a blistering thing.”
“(Shows) the ease with which the boundaries of genre and nationality can be broken through music. There, this album dwells: in the quiet times where people live fully with each other…Giddens turns her exquisite voice and sensibility toward this psychic territory...(an) exploration of heartfelt exchange and private longing.”
“Timeless and utterly of this time. Filigree and ferocious in equal measure.”
“This is acoustic roots music at its most glorious, and Giddens is fast becoming the genre’s brightest star in the firmament.”