The Lowell Summer Music Series started their announcements for the next season – 2018 – today with a fabulous coup! Appearing for the first time on Friday, June 15th is the incredible 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 début 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.”

Tickets for the Rhiannon Giddens show are priced at $44 in advance (fee-free!). There are also premium seats – beach chairs are provided by the Series – set in two rows directly in front of the stage for $144. Tickets for this show go on sale on Wednesday, November 15th at 9 a.m. through Lowell Summer Music Series.

For those of you who are unaware of the Series, or if you are aware of it but have never attended a show there, it is an outdoor (weather permitting) concert series held on National Park Service grounds in Lowell, Massachusetts. The Series is not-for-profit, which helps keep the ticket prices reasonable.

Surrounding Boarding House Park are old mill buildings, part of the Lowell National Historical Park, which you can tour if you arrive early enough. They provide an unusual setting for an evening of great music and ambiance.

The Series generally runs from mid-June to early September.

This Series is dear to my heart. I have been a season pass holder since 2007 and it is one of the highlights of the year (and of summer in particular) for me. Many lasting friendships have been made there. I expect this will be another excellent year!

I will post additional announcements for the Series as they are made.

So far, the  lineup is:

June 15 (Friday) – Rhiannon Giddens