An Evening with Rhiannon Giddens
Date & Time: Sunday, November 8, 2026
5-6:30 pm
Location: Tsai Performance Center
685 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215
Event Description: The award-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens joins Professor Victor Coehlo of BU’s College of Fine Arts for a conversation about her life and work.
Registration: Admission is free; a reservation will ensure a seat: artsandideas2026.eventbrite.com
Attendance: (For Kilachand Honors College Students) At the end of the event, a QR code will be located outside of the auditorium for you to check-in. This QR will expire, so please complete the check-in form immediately. You must check-in to earn co-curricular attendance credit for this event.
Boston University and Kilachand Honors College strive to be accessible, inclusive, and diverse in our facilities, programming, and academic offerings. Your experience at our events is important to us. If you have a disability, require communication access services for the deaf or hard of hearing, or believe that you require a reasonable accommodation for another reason, please contact Megan Kagstrom (mjwest@bu.edu) by October 23, 2026 to discuss your needs.
Meet Rhiannon Giddens
Rhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable. A two-time GRAMMY Award-winning singer and multi-instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, Pulitzer Prize winner, and composer of opera, ballet, and film, Giddens has centered her work around the mission of lifting up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, and advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins through art.
A founding member of the landmark Black string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, and the all-female banjo supergroup, Our Native Daughters, Giddens is as much a curator as a creator. She is the current Artistic Director of the Yo-Yo Ma-founded Silkroad Ensemble, hosts a TV show on PBS, My Music with Rhiannon Giddens, and has hosted two podcasts (Aria Code from New York City’s NPR affiliate station WQXR, which ran for three seasons, and American Railroad from Silkroad). Giddens has published two children’s books and written and performed music for the soundtrack of Red Dead Redemption II, one of the best-selling video games of all time. She was a music consultant for 2025’s landmark film Sinners, and appeared as a recurring cast member on ABC’s hit drama Nashville and as a music history expert on Ken Burns’ Country Music series on PBS.