Lowell Summer Music Series: Rhiannon Giddens

Singer-songwriter Rhiannon Giddens is the co-founder of the Grammy award-winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, in which she also plays banjo and fiddle. She began gaining recognition as a solo artist when she stole the show at the T Bone Burnett-produced Another Day, Another Time concert at New York City's Town Hall in 2013. The elegant bearing, prodigious voice, and fierce spirit that brought the audience to its feet that night is also abundantly evident on Giddens' critically acclaimed solo debut, the Grammy nominated album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, which masterfully blends American musical genres like gospel, jazz, blues, and country, showcasing her extraordinary emotional range and dazzling vocal prowess.

Giddens' follow-up album Freedom Highway was released in February, 2017. It includes 9 original songs Giddens wrote or co-wrote along with a traditional song and two civil rights-era songs, "Birmingham Sunday" and Staple Singers' well-known "Freedom Highway," from which the album takes its name.

Giddens' recent televised performances include The Late Show, Austin City Limits, Later...with Jools Holland, and both CBS Saturday and Sunday Morning, among numerous other notable media appearances. She performed for President Obama and the First Lady on a White House Tribute to Gospel along with Aretha Franklin and Emmylou Harris; the program was televised on PBS. Giddens duets with country superstar Eric Church on his powerful anti-racism song "Kill a Word," which is currently top 15 on country radio; the two have performed the song on The Tonight Show and the CMA Awards, among other programs. Giddens received the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Singer of the Year and has won the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Bluegrass and Banjo in 2016.

Giddens, who studied opera at Oberlin, makes her acting debut with a recurring role on the recently revived television drama Nashville, which debuts on CMT in January 2018, playing the role of Hanna Lee "Hallie" Jordan, a young social worker with "the voice of an angel".

In October 2017, Rhiannon Giddens won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for "exceptional originality, insight and potential."

Special Guest: Amythyst Kiah

A professed Southern Gothic, alt-country blues singer/songwriter based in Johnson City, TN, Amythyst Kiah's commanding stage presence is only matched by her raw and powerful vocals - deeply moving, hypnotic sound that stirs echoes of a distant and restless past.

Accoutered interchangeably with banjo, acoustic guitar, or a full band (Her Chest of Glass), Amythyst's toolbox is augmented by her scholarship of African-American roots music. Her eclectic influences span decades, drawing heavily on old time music (Mississippi Sheiks, Son House, Jimmie Rodgers, Olla Belle Reed, Carter Family), inspired by strong R&B and country music vocalists from the ''50s-'70s (Big Mama Thornton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mahalia Jackson, Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn) and influenced by contemporary artists with powerful vocal integrity (Adele, Florence and the Machine, Megan Jean and the KFB, Janelle Monae).

Recent tours in Scotland and the U.K. have seen Amythyst performing for audiences at the Americana Music Association UK Showcase, the Southern Fried Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival, the Edinburgh Jazz Festival, and SummerTyne Americana Festival. She is a crowd favorite at Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion in the U.S., has performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, and the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival.

Provocative and coolly fierce, Amythyst Kiah's ability to cross the boundaries of blues and old-time through reinterpretation is groundbreaking and simply unforgettable.

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