Rhiannon Giddens at the Uptown

JaM Cellars presents Rhiannon Giddens & The Old-Time Revue at the Uptown Theatre on Sunday, June 15, at 8 p.m. Giddens has made an iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable.  A two-time Grammy Award-winning singer and multiinstrumentalist, 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. A founding member of the Black string band Carolina Chocolate Drops and the allfemale banjo supergroup Our Native Daughters, Giddens is the artistic director of the Yo-Yo Ma-founded Silkroad Ensemble and hosts a TV show on PBS, My Music with Rhiannon Gidden. She 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.  She recently launched her own music festival in Durham, N.C. called Biscuits & Banjos, to celebrate Black culture outside the mainstream. Giddens has released three albums under her own name and two in collaboration with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, all on Nonesuch Records. The most recent of those is You’re the One, which was released in summer 2023. American Railroad, her first album in collaboration with the Silkroad Ensemble, was released in November 2024. She is a Grammy nominee for her performance of the song “The Ballad of Sally Anne,” a song written by Black country artist Alice Randall.

Uptown Theatre, 1350 Third St., Napa, www.uptowntheatrenapa.com