Silkroad Announces 2024 American Railroad Tour

Following a highly successful debut tour, Silkroad brings the next phase 
of its multi-year initiative to more American cities

“One of the cultural highlights of the year.” —The Santa Barbara Independent

“An exhilarating musical ride.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Boston, MA — Today, Silkroad announces dates for the second tour of its multi-year American Railroad initiative, conceived by Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens. From November 7-23, Silkroad will visit 10 cities in the Midwestern, Southern, and Eastern United States with railroad-related cultural history, performing a program that includes world premiere works by Silkroad artists Layale Chaker and Sandeep Das and by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Michael Abels, as well as new arrangements by Silkroad artists Balla Kouyaté with Mike Block, Pura Fé, and Shane Shanahan, and by guest artist Yazhi Guo. The program also features works originally performed on the debut tour in 2023. Many tour stops include education and engagement activities for further exploration. Tickets to most dates are on sale.

“I’m so happy with the work we’ve been presenting related to the American Railroad project and could not be more thrilled to kick off a new tour this November, featuring a new group of Silkroad artists who will each lend their own unique voices and stories to the show,” said Giddens.

After completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, a trip from coast to coast that used to take months was shortened to just under a week, allowing for the transport of goods and ideas across the continent. Profit-seeking corporations and the American government financed it, but the people who actually built it—Indigenous and African Americans as well Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and other immigrant laborers—are the focus of Silkroad’s American Railroad. The ambitious project highlights untold stories and amplifies unheard voices from these communities, addressing past injustices and providing a more truthful account of global diasporic contributions to the creation of the American Empire. This in-depth exploration began in 2020 with artist retreats and site visits throughout the nation, as well as the creation of new compositions and a broad range of educational resources and community-building activities.

The second tour continues Silkroad’s exploration of music with a purpose by featuring several new commissions and arrangements, as well as works performed on the debut tour last fall. Receiving their world premieres are works by Layale Chaker and Michael Abels, and “Rela” by Sandeep Das. Chaker and Das’s pieces tell stories of the railroad’s impact on communities in their respective homelands of Lebanon and India, taking the work that the ensemble started in the U.S. and applying it on a global scale. Abels’s piece digs into the nature of cooperation and imagines a world where a win for one doesn't have to come at the cost of someone else. The program also includes new arrangements of Balla Kouyaté and Mike Block’s “Bani,” Pura Fé’s “Greatgrandpa’s Banjo,” Yazhi Guo’s new work weaving together Wu Man’s “Rainy Day” and a traditional Guangdong work song, and Shane Shanahan’s “Summit.” Shanahan’s arrangement originated at a Train Station Trio residency at the California State Railroad Museum. It shines a light on the workers who were left out of the famous photo celebrating the last spike connecting the Transcontinental Railroad, while musically tracing the topography of the mountainous region where it was set.

Carrying over from last year’s tour are Rhiannon Giddens’s arrangement of “Swannanoa Tunnel”—a work song from the African Americans forced to labor on the railroad in her home state of North Carolina—and commissions by Silkroad artists Maeve Gilchrist and Haruka Fujii and by Grammy Award-winning vocalist and composer Cécile McLorin Salvant. Fujii’s “Tamping Song” celebrates the Japanese immigrant contribution to the railroad, particularly after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; while Gilchrist’s “Far Down Far” shines light on the tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities within Irish railroad workers. McLorin Salvant’s first-ever Silkroad commission, “Have You Seen My Man,” tells the imagined story of a woman walking slowly along a train track, joined by generations of wanderers who cannot ride the train though it was built on their backs. Rounding out the program is a piece by Pura Fé.

Throughout the tour, Silkroad will also offer education and community activities that allow audiences of all ages to engage more deeply with local railroad history. In Chicago, select Silkroad artists will give a masterclass to a local high school ensemble; and a trio of musicians will perform for people in line at the polls on Election Day, as part of Mike Block’s Play for the Vote. Rhiannon Giddens and other Silkroad artists will be in residency at Emory University with invited students from Spelman College in Atlanta. In Chapel Hill, select artists will give a Q&A for the University of North Carolina’s “Worker in American Life” course, and those students will attend an open rehearsal for the American Railroad program. Upon conclusion of the tour, select artists will lead workshops in New York as part of Silkroad’s Project MUSIC (Music Uniting Strangers Into Community)—a program that leverages partnerships within the justice system to bring shared musical experiences to carceral communities across the country.

In addition to the upcoming tour, Silkroad’s American Railroad will include releases of an album and a podcast in 2024. Further details about these components will be announced soon.

Audiences wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the historical context, the origins of the music being performed, and the partnerships formed through the project, can do so by accessing the American Railroad booklet available on Silkroad’s website. Developed in 2023, this educational resource has been viewed by more than 10,000 people around the world.


2024 AMERICAN RAILROAD TOUR – ROSTER & SCHEDULE:

Rhiannon Giddens, banjo/vocals
Mike Block, cello
Layale Chaker, violin
Pura Fé Crescioni, lap-steel guitar/voice
Sandeep Das, tabla
Maeve Gilchrist, Celtic harp
Mario Gotoh, violin/viola
Yazhi Guo*, suona
Balla Kouyaté, balafon
Edward Pérez, bass
Shane Shanahan, percussion
Francesco Turrisi, frame drums/accordion
Kaoru Watanabe, Japanese flutes/percussion

*Guest artist

Projections by Camilla Tassi


November 7, 2024
Harris Theater
Chicago, IL
Tickets

Community/Educational Activities:
Play for the Vote engagement (November 5)
Masterclass with local high school ensemble
Pre-performance talk for concert ticketholders

November 8, 2024
Presented by University Musical Society
Hill Auditorium
Ann Arbor, MI
Tickets

November 10, 2024
Schermerhorn Symphony Center
Nashville, TN
Tickets

November 12, 2024
Presented by City of Rogers Parks and Recreation
Rogers Convention Center
Rogers, AR
More Information (Tickets go on sale September 12)

November 14, 2024
Peace Center
Peace Concert Hall
Greenville, SC
Tickets

November 16, 2024
Schwartz Center for Performing Arts at Emory University
Atlanta, GA
More Information (Sold Out)

Educational Activities:
Residency at Emory University with invited students from Spelman College (November 15)

November 17, 2024
University of Georgia Performing Arts Center
Athens, GA
Tickets

November 19, 2024
Charleston Gaillard Center
Charleston, SC
Tickets

Community/Educational Activities:
Pre-performance talk for concert ticketholders

November 20, 2024
Carolina Performing Arts
Chapel Hill, NC
Tickets

Educational Activities:
Q&A and open rehearsal for students in UNC’s “Worker in American Life” course (November 20)

November 23, 2024
Part of Next Wave 2024
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Brooklyn, NY
Tickets


OTHER 2024 AMERICAN RAILROAD PROGRAMMING:

Train Station Trio: Pura Fé, Shane Shanahan, Michi Wiancko
September 27, 2024
The Art Kamangar Center at The Merced Theatre
Merced, CA
Free Registration

Train Station Trio: Balla Kouyaté, Mike Block, Edward Pérez
Part of Harvard ArtsThursdays
December 12, 2024
Paine Concert Hall
Cambridge, MA
More Information


Acknowledgements & Funding Credits
Support for American Railroad is provided, in part, by the Alice L. Walton Foundation, Barr Foundation, California State Railroad Museum Foundation, FreshGrass Foundation, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, GRoW @ Annenberg, LaVon Kellner and Tom Roush, Diann Kim and John Frank, Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, Pershing Square Foundation, Playbill, Lori and Ted Samuels, Wagner Family Foundation, Whitehead Foundation, along with many other generous donors to Silkroad.

American Railroad was created, in part, with support from the Center for the Arts at George Mason University through the Mason Artist-in-Residence program.

Special thanks to the many communities across America whose culture bearers have worked with the artists of Silkroad to relay history and share stories and artistry integral to the creation of the music for the American Railroad tour and the overall initiative.

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- and Pulitzer Prize-winner, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, singer and instrumentalist, 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.

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.”

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