Rhiannon Giddens Shares Her Interpretation of Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train,” from Forthcoming album Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, Out September 18 on Nonesuch Records

Track List

1. Angel Fire Rise
2. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
3. Step Away Blues
4. Wish in Vain
5. Carolina Rain
6. High on a Mountain
7. Freight Train
8. Walk with Me
9. Cluck Old Hen
10. Going Home

Tour Dates:

Aug 20 - Lenox, MA - Seiji Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood *

Aug 21 - Waterloo, NY - The Vine Theater at del Lago Resort *

Aug 22 - Chautauqua, NY - Chautauqua Institution *

Nov 01 - Minneapolis, MN - Walker Art Center (Mack Lecture Series)

Nov 14 - New York, NY - Carnegie Hall (with Silkroad Ensemble & Yo-Yo Ma)

Nov 25-29 - Hamburg, Germany - Elbphilharmonie

* Performance with Silkroad Ensemble - Sanctuary: The Power of Resonance and Ritual

About Rhiannon Giddens

Rhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable. A two-time GRAMMY Award-winning singer and multi-instrumentalist, MacArthur "Genius" grant recipient, Pulitzer Prize winner, and composer of opera, ballet, and film, Giddens has centered her work around the mission of lifting up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, and advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country's musical origins through art.

Giddens has released three previous albums under her own name and two in collaboration with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, all on Nonesuch Records. American Railroad, her first album in collaboration with the Silkroad Ensemble, was released by the label in November 2024. A collaboration with Justin Robinson, What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow, was released by Nonesuch in April 2025.

A founding member of the landmark Black string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, and the all-female banjo supergroup, Our Native Daughters, Giddens is as much a curator as a creator. She is the current Artistic Director of the Yo-Yo Ma-founded Silkroad Ensemble, hosted a TV show on PBS, My Music with Rhiannon Giddens, and has hosted two podcasts (Aria Code from New York City's NPR affiliate station WQXR, which ran for three seasons, and American Railroad from Silkroad). Giddens has published two children's books and written and performed music for the soundtrack of Red Dead Redemption II, one of the best-selling video games of all time. She was a music consultant for 2025's landmark film Sinners, and appeared as a recurring cast member on ABC's hit drama Nashville and as a music history expert on Ken Burns' Country Music series on PBS. In 2025, she launched her own music festival in Durham, NC called Biscuits & Banjos, to celebrate Black culture outside the mainstream, and in 2026 she turned that initiative into a Foundation to house her mission-based work, the Biscuits and Banjos Foundation.

As Pitchfork once said, "few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration"-a journey that has led to NPR naming her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century and to American Songwriter calling her "one of the most important musical minds currently walking the planet."