Reflektor Rhiannon Giddens

She is also deeply engaged with the history of American musical genres and of the banjo itself, which was once developed in the Southern states by enslaved Black people, drawing on traditional instruments from their lost African homelands. Giddens’s mission ever since has been to reclaim the banjo’s history and to reconstruct connections between related musical styles across the Atlantic. And there is more: as the new Artistic Director of the Silkroad Ensemble, succeeding its founder Yo-Yo Ma, she is expanding the repertoire of this legendary multicultural collective. Members of Silkroad present excerpts from Giddens’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera »Omar« and her ballet »Black Lucy and the Bard«. A recital with a programme of works that range from Baroque to spirituals, along with prominent guests such as Seckou Keita and Leyla McCalla, rounds off the festival.