“We have this tendency to group ourselves, but then we also have this ability—through music, through dance, through food—to come together and make something new,” Rhiannon Giddens says on the PBS mini-series The Articulate Hour hosted by Jim Cotter. The episode delves into humans' contrasting needs for community and solitude and includes a conversation with Giddens and performances by her and Francesco Turrisi. You can watch it here, along with the second episode of her own PBS series My Music with Rhiannon Giddens, with guest Allison Russell.

The new series My Music with Rhiannon Giddens premiered on PBS stations across the US this week. In the inaugural episode, Rhiannon Giddens visits with three lifelong friends: Justin Robinson, one of her fellow Carolina Chocolate Drops co-founders; her sister, singer Lalenja Harrington; and singer-songwriter Laurelyn Dossett. You can watch it here.

Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, has announced its 2023–24 concert season, including performances by Brad Mehldau (both solo and with his Trio), Cécile McLorin Salvant, Kronos Quartet, Rhiannon Giddens with Silkroad Ensemble, and Attacca Quartet.

Rhiannon Giddens will host a new series on PBS, My Music with Rhiannon Giddens, produced by the team behind the long-running PBS series David Holt’s State of Music. In seven half-hour weekly episodes, beginning the week of May 1, Giddens hosts musical performances and conversations with guest artists filmed on location around the South, including Allison Russell, Rissi Palmer, Charly Lowry, Adia Victoria, Joy Clark, Francesco Turrisi, Justin Robinson, Lalenja Harrington, and Laurelyn Dossett.

Rhiannon Giddens and Molly Tuttle are featured in a new Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum exhibit American Currents: State of the Music, which highlights significant developments in country music over the past year. The exhibit opened at the Nashville museum last night and runs until February 2024. Tuttle's display includes her grandfather's guitar and the clothing pictured on the cover of her Grammy-winning album Crooked Tree; Giddens's celebrates her Grammy-winning album They're Calling Me Home; her Carnegie Hall Perspectives series; her debut book, Build a House; and her opera Omar.

Rhiannon Giddens’s second book, We Could Fly, is due October 10, from Candlewick Press. The picture book, a companion to her debut book, Build a House, released last October, gives wing to a tale of grace and transcendence, with illustrations by acclaimed artist Briana Mukodiri Uchendu. The new book draws on lyrics from the song “We Could Fly,” which Giddens wrote with Dirk Powell and recorded for her 2017 Nonesuch album, Freedom Highway. It draws on a heritage of African folklore for a dialogue between a mother and daughter, paired with illustrations that celebrate love, resilience, and the spiritual power of the “old-time ways”—tradition and shared cultural memory—to sustain and uplift.

Rhiannon Giddens addressed an audience at The Juilliard School’s Glorya Kaufman Dance Studio on January 23 for the tenth annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Speaker Series at Juilliard, where she is a Creative Associate. Giddens, who opens her speech with a performance of the traditional tune “Pretty Saro,” centers the talk around artists' responsibility to themselves, their creative process, and their community. You can watch it here.

Rhiannon Giddens is on Speaking Soundly, a podcast in which host and MET Opera Principal Trumpet David Krauss talks with fellow performers about their creative process and lives as artists. “In addition to being expert in the music, you’re steeping in the history behind the music,” Krauss says. “And then you compose a song to capture that history and use it as a lens to focus in on what’s really happening in our society today. That’s a lot.” You can hear their conversation here.

Yo-Yo Ma has partnered with Knoxville-based arts nonprofit Big Ears for the multi-faceted concert “Our Common Nature: An Appalachian Celebration,” with musical guests Rhiannon Giddens, Chris Thile, and Edgar Meyer, on Friday, May 26, at World’s Fair Park in Knoxville, TN. In addition, Thile and Giddens will each perform a concert, May 25 and May 27, respectively, at Knoxville's Bijou Theatre. Conceived and curated by Ma, the World’s Fair Park celebration will include musicians, storytellers, and poets from throughout the Appalachian region, and will be the culmination of a week-long series of cultural experiences and conversations that lift the myriad voices of Appalachia—Indigenous, European, Latinx, Black, and beyond.

Rhiannon Giddens is on Sing for Science, the science and music podcast from Talkhouse. The focus of the episode, titled “At the Purchaser’s Option: Listening for the African Diaspora in American Music,” is the opening track to her 2017 album, Freedom Highway. Giddens, host Matt Whyte, and ethnomusicologist Dr. Portia Maultsby discuss "At the Purchaser's Option," the African origins of the banjo, and the connection between African and African American music. You can hear it here.

Rhiannon Giddens will tour the UK this spring, joined by multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. The tour starts in Aberdeen on April 27, with shows in Edinburgh, Gateshead, Perth, London, Norwich, Birmingham, and Essex. They follow the last two concerts of Giddens' Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall and bookend the Boston Lyric Opera run of Omar, her opera with Michael Abels, in May. They precede the 2023 Ojai Festival, of which she is Music Director, in June, and a trip to Italy for festival sets in Spoleto and Umbria in July.

Rhiannon Giddens is on the latest episode of BBC World Service’s Music Life with fellow musicians Alela Diane, Mariee Siou, and Uwade. They discuss the spark that goes off when songwriting goes well, how moments of personal growth and transition affect their music, thinking of taxes while performing, and more. You can hear their conversation here.