Acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens is joined by her full band and special Richmond guests The Legendary Ingramettes. Hailed by Smithsonian Magazine as “an electrifying artist who brings alive the memories of forgotten predecessors, white and black,” Giddens combines her fearless explorations of American roots music with the Ingramettes' roof-raising African-American gospel. This special event promises to be an uplifting, electrifying, and celebratory night of music and community.
Rhiannon Giddens uses her art to excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present. A 2017 MacArthur "genius grant" Fellowship recipient, Giddens co-founded the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops and has been nominated for six more Grammys for her work as a soloist and collaborator. Giddens’s lifelong mission is to lift up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased and to work toward a more accurate understanding of our nation's musical origins. Named Artistic Director of Silkroad in 2020, Giddens is developing a number of new programs for the organization, including one inspired by the history of the American transcontinental railroad and the cultures and music of its builders.
Six decades of music, sixty-five years of song, generations tied together through the force of will of a matriarchy of powerful women: this is the story of African-American gospel quintet The Legendary Ingramettes, founded by Maggie Ingram (who passed away in 2015) as a way to keep her family together through hardship and taken up by daughter Almeta Ingram-Miller to continue Maggie’s legacy. Inspired by the Black male gospel quartets of the 1940s and '50s, The Legendary Ingramettes bring explosively powerful vocal harmonies driven by the voices of women.
