Silkroad Announces Program Details for Sanctuary: The Power of Resonance and Ritual

Boston, MA — Silkroad announces further details of its next flagship touring program, Sanctuary: The Power of Resonance and Ritual. The second major initiative conceived by Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens—following the success of American Railroad which toured from 2023-2025—Sanctuary represents a new direction for Silkroad, one focused more than ever before on community, collaboration, and healing. Tickets for the debut concerts of Sanctuary, taking place from March 10-28, 2026 across the United States, are on sale now.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what music is for. Music has always had a function in human society. Entertainment was always a very small piece of that, and the rest of it—especially for folks who are not of the elite—was part of the everyday fabric of human life,” said Giddens.

Throughout history, people have turned to music for soothing and solace in times of conflict, uncertainty, and change. Across cultures—from Morocco to India to Ireland—the communal act of music-making has often been linked to trance, release, and connection. In Sanctuary, Rhiannon Giddens and the Silkroad Ensemble explore how these traditions help us make sense of our world, process loss, navigate environmental and social changes, and rebuild community through shared musical experience. At its core, the program seeks to uplift—offering joy, hope, and a renewed sense of belonging through collective listening and presence.

To create the program, Silkroad artists are engaging deeply with one another’s musical languages. Each artist brings a piece of their musical lineage, reflecting on how music serves as sanctuary. Taught and learned aurally with semi-improvisatory arrangements, each performance of the program reflects an authentic musical response from the ensemble in real time.

The forms of music featured on Sanctuary are not presented as passive entertainment, but as practices rooted in ritual, healing, and spirituality. The program draws on Southern Italian tarantellas, historically performed as music-and-dance rituals believed to cure the effects of a tarantula’s bite. Led by guest artist Mauro Durante alongside Silkroad artist Francesco Turrisi, its driving rhythms and energy offer a powerful expression of communal release and renewal.

Moroccan Gnawa music, represented by guest artist Mehdi Nassouli, invokes ancestors and saints through all-night trance ceremonies that blend West African traditions with Arab-Muslim and Indigenous Berber influences. Long associated with healing and spiritual liberation, Gnawa demonstrates how repetition and rhythm can open space for collective transcendence.

In Hindu tradition, music is inseparable from spiritual devotion. Played here by Silkroad artist Sandeep Das, the tabla’s paired drums embody balance—between masculine and feminine energies, structure, and improvisation—reflecting a philosophy in which deep listening and equilibrium are essential to both inner and outer life.

Sanctuary also incorporates the Congolese fingerstyle guitar with Silkroad artist Niwel Tsumbu, a tradition shaped by migration, colonial history, and global exchange. Its interlocking lines transform struggle into motion and beauty, offering both solace and social commentary through rhythm and groove. American old-time music led by Rhiannon Giddens further grounds the program, recalling songs passed down through generations as companions through hardship.

Together, these traditions — and many others being shared by the Silkroad artists in this program — reveal music not simply as performance, but as a communal practice that helps people to find sanctuary through shared sound and ritual.

“I want the audience to feel that we are safe, the musicians on stage, and that we are having a transcendent evening,” said Giddens. “I don't need them to not see the insides. I want the audience to see us reveling in the music, and laughing with each other, or being intense with each other, in a way that I always love to see more of myself, because it makes me feel human, to see musicians being human, and to see communication going on.”

Sanctuary honors music’s long tradition as a communal and functional art form, and thus invites audiences to participate fully, joining in a shared evening of music-making that transforms spectatorship into community and listening into collective experience.

Giddens concludes, “Through this program, we as musicians are healing ourselves even as we’re hopefully providing some healing and respite for the audience, who have themselves become part of our community for the evening.”

Silkroad will also offer free public programs over the course of Sanctuary, taking musicians outside of the concert halls and into local communities to foster connection, challenge assumptions, and inspire change. These events include community jam sessions and meals, as well as workshops, panels, and discussions curated by Silkroad artists and local partners. A listing of open-to-the-public programs is included within the tour schedule below.

2026 SANCTUARY: THE POWER OF RESONANCE AND RITUAL TOUR – ROSTER & SCHEDULE:

Rhiannon Giddens, banjo, vocals
Shawn Conley, bass
Sandeep Das, tabla
Haruka Fujii, marimba, percussion
Maeve Gilchrist^, harp
Karen Ouzounian, cello
Mazz Swift, violin, vocals
Niwel Tsumbu, guitar, vocals
Francesco Turrisi, frame drums, accordion
Kaoru Watanabe**, Japanese flutes and percussion
Mauro Durante*, tamburello, violin, vocals
Mehdi Nassouli*, guembri, vocals

*Guest artist
**Bowling Green to Fairfax performances only (March 10-22, 2026)
^Berkeley to Princeton performances only ((March 19-28, 2026)

March 10, 2026
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH
More Information (Sold Out)

Open-to-the-Public Programs:

All programs below are co-presented with Bowling Green State University.

March 8, 2026 at 3 p.m. ET
Silkroad @ The Library
Wood County District Public Library

March 9, 2026 at 7 p.m. ET
Discussion and Community Jam
Kelly Hall, Moore Musical Arts Center at Bowling Green State University
Free Registration

March 12, 2026
Indiana University Auditorium
Bloomington, IN
Tickets

Open-to-the-Public Programs:

March 11, 2026 at 3:15 p.m. ET
Artists in Conversation with Dean Abra Bush
Auer Hall, Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University

March 15, 2026
Harris Theater for Music and Dance
Chicago, IL
Tickets

Open-to-the-Public Programs:

All programs below are co-presented with Harris Theater for Music and Dance.

March 13, 2026 at 7 p.m. CT
Sanctuary: A D-Compressed Gathering
In partnership with D-Composed and Rebuild Foundation
The Land School
Free Registration

March 14, 2026 at 11:30 a.m. CT
Community Jam/Dance
In partnership with Old Town School’s Music Moves initiative
Green Line Performing Arts Center
Free Registration

March 19-20, 2026
Presented by Cal Performances
Zellerbach Hall
Berkeley, CA
Tickets

Open-to-the-Public Programs:

All programs below are presented in partnership with Oakland Public Conservatory of Music.

March 17, 2026 at 4 p.m. PT
Cross Cultural Music Workshop
Oakland Asian Cultural Center

March 17, 2026 at 6 p.m. PT
Screening of My Music with Rhiannon Giddens Episode and Q&A
Oakland Public Conservatory of Music

March 17, 2026 at 7 p.m. PT
Percussion Collective Panel & Community Jam
Black Arts Movement Business District - Community Development Corporation of Oakland

March 18, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. PT
Banjo/Fiddle Gathering
Latham Square - Uptown Downtown Oakland Community Benefit Districts

March 18, 2026 at 5:30 p.m. PT
String Collective Community Jam
Black Arts Movement Business District - Community Development Corporation of Oakland

March 22, 2026
Center for the Arts at George Mason University
Fairfax, VA
Tickets

Open-to-the-Public Programs:

March 23, 2026 at 7 p.m. ET
Artists in Conversation: Silkroad Resonance Circle (Community Jam)
Co-presented by the City of Fairfax and the Center for the Arts at George Mason University
Stacy C. Sherwood Community Center
Free, but registration required

March 26, 2026
Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre
Rochester, NY
Tickets

March 27, 2026
Tilles Center for the Performing Arts
Brookville, NY
Tickets

March 28, 2026
McCarter Theatre Center
Princeton, NJ
Tickets

Acknowledgements & Funding Credits
Major support for Silkroad's Sanctuary: The Power of Resonance and Ritual is provided, in part, by Alice L. Walton Foundation, LaVon Kellner and Tom Roush, Diann Kim and John Frank, Mellon Foundation, and Lori and Ted Samuels, along with other generous donors to Silkroad who believe in music's essential role in healing across cultures and traditions.

Sanctuary: The Power of Resonance and Ritual was created, in part, with support from the Center for the Arts at George Mason University through the Mason Artist-in-Residence program.

About Silkroad
Yo-Yo Ma conceived Silkroad in 1998, recognizing the historical Silk Road as a model for cultural collaboration—for the exchange of ideas, tradition, and innovation across borders. In a groundbreaking experiment, he brought together musicians from the lands of the Silk Road to co-create a musical language founded in difference, thus creating the foundation of Silkroad: both a touring ensemble comprised of world-class musicians from all over the globe and a Boston-based non-profit organization working to make a positive impact across borders through the arts.

Today, under the leadership of Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens and Executive Director Ben Hartley, Silkroad leads social impact initiatives and educational programming alongside the creation of new music by the Grammy Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble.

To learn more, please visit silkroad.org and @silkroadproject on social media.

About 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 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. In 2025, she launched her own music festival in Durham, NC called Biscuits & Banjos, to celebrate Black culture outside the mainstream.

As Pitchfork once said, “few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration”—a journey that has led to NPR naming her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century and to American Songwriter calling her “one of the most important musical minds currently walking the planet.”

Her most recent album, a collaboration with Justin Robinson, is What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow (April 2025).

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