Rhiannon Giddens, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and founding member of Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, makes her solo recording debut with Tomorrow Is My Turn, out today on Nonesuch Records. Giddens will make her solo television debut when she performs "Waterboy" from Tomorrow Is My Turn on CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman tonight. The album was produced by T Bone Burnett and is available at your local music shop, on iTunes, Amazon, and in the Nonesuch Store, where orders include a download of the complete album at checkout and CD orders and vinyl pre-orders (due March 3) include an exclusive, autographed print for a limited time. The HD digital album is also available in the Nonesuch Store. 

Giddens was featured on NPR's Morning Edition today. She spoke with host Renee Montagne about one particular song on the album, "Black Is the Color," popularized by Nina Simone and arranged by Giddens for the album, and about her strong connection to Gaelic mouth music, which Montagne calls a "show stopper." You can hear the interview at npr.org.

Tomorrow Is My Turn "is a showcase for Ms. Giddens’s glorious voice, which merges an opera singer’s detail and a deep connection to Southern roots," writes New York Times music critic Jon Pareles. "She can summon the power of a field holler, Celtic quavers, girlish innocence, bluesy sensuality, gospel exaltation or the pain of slavery. She can sing velvety, long-breathed phrases or rasp and yip like a singer from the backwoods long ago. For all her technical control, her voice is a perpetually soulful marvel."

"It's a scrupulously selected, richly realized collection of songs," says NPR's Ann Powers. "Though she didn't write most of these songs, Giddens owns them on Tomorrow Is My Turn ... Her voice—mobile, intelligent, ready to talk back to anyone's presumptions—is always at the center here, guiding the story. Let me be the first to say it: Today is Rhiannon Giddens' turn."

"Rhiannon Giddens has become one of the most promising voices in American roots music," writes Rolling Stone's Jonathan Bernstein. "Tomorrow Is My Turn is a feminist tour of the canon … Giddens imbues these classics with a freshness and vitality that feels right at home in 2015."

The album is "a spirited collection of songs both traditional and contemporary," says the Boston Globe's James Reed. "This is Americana in its purest form, where gospel, folk, blues, soul, and Celtic melodies all make sense on the same album when interpreted by a dexterous vocalist and multi-instrumentalist of Giddens’s caliber." Reed goes on to say: "Obviously her connection to the material runs deep. Her voice, and the way it works with such subtlety in different contexts, is the album’s biggest surprise and centerpiece."

"Every now and then, an artist comes along whose voice transforms almost any kind of song," says the Sunday Times of London writer Clive Davis in a feature profile. "Rhiannon Giddens can sing blues and Gaelic jigs, Nashville ballads and vintage jazz, Appalachian laments and sassy R&B. Oh, and she plays vivacious fiddle and banjo, too. Classically trained, she is a performer who thinks long and hard about how to approach material, yet manages to tap into the emotional core of everything she touches." Her new album, Davis writes, "more than lives up to expectations ... Giddens is utterly in command." You can read the article at thesundaytimes.co.uk.

The Irish Times exclaims: "This is one seriously impressive debut album." American Songwriter has named her Writer of the Week.

"With her superb debut, Tomorrow Is My Turn, Giddens’ light shines with the dazzling brilliance of a genuine star," exclaims PopMatters' George de Stefano. "On every track, Giddens’ singing is a wonder. She can dirty up a vocal line with blue notes and growls, sing with crystalline purity, rock out and soothe ... Everything works on Tomorrow Is My Turn, an album that heralds the arrival of a major American artist."

"Rhiannon Giddens proves to be an impressive musical shape-shifter on her debut album," says Newsday's Glenn Gamboa. "As a singer and violinist with the ever-eclectic Carolina Chocolate Drops, Giddens has always been able to handle a wide variety of folk-related styles. But with the spotlight firmly planted on her here, she is able to inhabit these styles even more convincingly, with help from producer T Bone Burnett."