Rhiannon Giddens, banjo, voice
Shawn Conley, bass
Pura Fé Crescioni, lap steel guitar, voice
Haruka Fujii, percussion
Sandeep Das, tablas
Maeve Gilchrist, Celtic harp
Karen Ouzounian, cello
Mazz Swift, violin, voice
Niwel Tsumbu, guitar
Francesco Turrisi, frame drums, accordion
Kaoru Watanabe, percussion
Wu Man, pipa

Under the leadership of 2023 Pultizer Prize winner, the dynamic multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens, the Grammy-winning, genre-defying Silkroad Ensemble embarks on a new initiative that illuminates the impact of under-recognized voices in America’s expansion west. The project explores the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad through the contributions of African American, Chinese, Irish, Indigenous, and other communities, their cultures, and their music. Chinese traditional instruments like the guzheng, pipa, erhu, and qinqin are contrasted with the fiddle, bones, tambo, and banjo of Black musical traditions, and their Indigenous and Celtic counterparts. New compositions and commissions weave all these seemingly disparate traditions together to tell a new version of the American story. As Giddens told the New York Times, “Silkroad has people from all over, and that’s what makes it such a great group to represent the American story, because that’s what the American story is. We are world music.”

This event is part of Cal Performances’ Illuminations: “Individual & Community” programming for the 2023–24 season.

Patron Sponsors: S. Shariq Yosufzai and Brian James