“Silkroad’s main programming initiative, the Silkroad Ensemble, has … announced eight new tour dates featuring Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens,” writes Hilary Saunders in Thursday’s (5/12) No Depression, a quarterly journal on roots music. “The new work, titled Phoenix Rising, features the Grammy award-winning banjoist and singer-songwriter Giddens along with 13 musicians of the ever-flexible Silkroad Ensemble. Together, they aim to bridge the past and the unnerving present with music highly influenced by their collective experience during the pandemic. As [Silkroad percussionist] Joseph Gramley … explained… ‘Phoenix Rising takes a cross-section of Silkroad’s award-winning compositions and arrangements and re-imagines them for today.’ Some of those new arrangements are of older works by Giddens, Colin Jacobsen, Edward Pérez, and Mazz Swift. But Phoenix Rising will also feature new commissions by Silkroad artists Sandeep Das, Maeve Gilchrist, and Kaoru Watanabe. Although Giddens had performed with the Silkroad Ensemble numerous times before her appointment as artistic director in 2020 … these upcoming dates will be their first complete national tour together.” The article includes the July 16-30 schedule of performances in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. Silkroad was founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 2000.
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