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Justin Robinson is a Grammy-winning musician and vocalist, cultural preservationist, and historic foodways expert. Robinson has used his wide range of interests and talents to preserve North Carolina’s African American history and culture, connecting people to the past and to the world around them.

Robinson grew up in Gastonia, NC. Influenced by the musical tastes of his grandparents, he grew to love a diversity of musical styles. He played with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, thereby working to preserve traditional forms of music, to introduce new generations to musical legends like Joe Thompson, and to remind audiences that the fiddle was, historically, an African American instrument. He wrote the song Kissin’ and Cussin’ for the group’s Grammy-winning album, Genuine Negro Jig, and continued to write music after leaving the group in 2011, releasing the album Bones for Tinder as Justin Robinson and the Mary Annettes in 2012.

In addition to preserving African American musical traditions, Robinson is known for his work as a culinary historian. He explores the ways that foods of the African diaspora shaped and influenced Southern foodways, and reveals how foods like rice, black-eyed peas, and okra can be traced directly to the African continent. Robinson is also committed to helping African Americans rekindle their ties to the land. He is a founding member of the Earthseed Land Cooperative, a collective in northern Durham “made up of farmers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and teachers who are currently engaged in creating alternative models for sustainability, equity, and cooperation within communities of color.”

Justin Robinson holds a BA in Linguistics from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MS in Forestry and Environmental Science from NC State University. He is a member of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina Board of Directors.

Mazz Swift is a violinist, singer, composer, and conductor, weaving improvisation, classic African American musics, electronica, and mindfulness into their work. They have composed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Kronos Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Blaffer Foundation. Aside from enjoying a robust career as a performer, Swift is an educator. They have performed and taught free-improvisation workshops on six continents, most notably having traveled to Suriname, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Albania, and Siberia as “cultural diplomat” for the U.S. Department of State. 

Mazz Swift is also a performing member and teaching artist with the acclaimed Silkroad Ensemble. As part of that group, they spearheaded and developed Project MUSIC (Music, Uniting Strangers Into Community), through which they seek to develop abolitionist-minded and anti-racist programming alongside incarcerated people, designing our own liberation through presence and creativity. 

Swift is a 2021 United States Artist, and 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, continually creating orchestral compositions that involve “Conduction” (conducted improvisation — a system for group improvisation pioneered and trademarked by the late, great Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris), small ensemble works, and solo works that are centered around protest and freedom songs, spirituals, and the Ghanaian concept of Sankofa: looking back to learn how to move forward. 

Visit Mazz Swift’s Website

Described as “radiant” and “expressive” (New York Times) and “nothing less than gorgeous” (Memphis Commercial Appeal), cellist Karen Ouzounian leads a multifaceted career as a chamber musician, soloist, collaborator, and composer. Winner of the S&R Foundation’s Washington Award, she is drawn to unusual collaborations and the development of adventurous new works, and is sought-after for her open-hearted, passionate, and vibrantly detailed approach to music-making. Recent projects include the creation of an experimental theater work with director Joanna Settle; the world premiere of Lembit Beecher’s cello concerto Tell Me Again with the Orlando Philharmonic; the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s Shorthand for solo cello and strings with The Knights, which she subsequently toured as soloist with The Knights throughout Europe and the U.S. and released on Avie Records; the release of Kayhan Kalhor’s Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur for solo cello, kamancheh, and tabla; the development, touring, and recording of Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time; and the digital world premiere of Beecher’s A Year to the Day, filmed for The Violin Channel with Augustin Hadelich and Nicholas Phan. She is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated Aizuri Quartet, and appears regularly as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble and The Knights. Her evening-length video work In Motion, an exploration of heritage, family history, and migration through interviews, her own compositions, and collaborations with visual artists Kevork Mourad and Nomi Sasaki and composer-percussionist Haruka Fujii, was presented by BroadBand in 2021.

Visit Karen Ouzounian’s Website

Hawaiian-born bassist and composer Shawn Conley grew up loving all types of music. This love developed into a career that straddles many genres. He has been playing with the Silkroad Ensemble for six years and is a member of the Brooklyn-based chamber orchestra The Knights. Recent projects include Silkroad’s Grammy-winning album Sing Me Home, an upcoming release of the Brahms and Beethoven violin concertos with Gil Shaham and The Knights, the world premiere tour of Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time (commissioned by Silkroad), as well as an international tour of the new performance-art piece The Head & the Load created by South African visual artist William Kentridge.

Conley can also be heard on The Knights album Azul, featuring Silkroad founder Yo-Yo Ma. As a studio musician, he has performed on multiple soundtracks including True Grit, Moonrise Kingdom, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Vietnam War documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, and the Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Conley studied at Rice University with Paul Ellison and in Paris, France, with Francois Rabbath.

Born in Japan, Mario Gotoh (五藤 舞央) is recognized as a Grammy Award winner, sought for distinguished roles as an innovative and creative violinist, violist, passionate educator, and composer with a remarkably unique style of expression in all genres, performing worldwide. An avid interdisciplinary collaborator, Dr. Gotoh performs worldwide as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble (founded by Yo-Yo Ma), and is also a member of The Knights, a collective based in NYC. Dr. Gotoh has performed at the Park Avenue Armory, Holland Festival, Tate Modern, and Ruhr Festival as an original featured actor in William Kentridge’s large-scale production, The Head & The Load, about Africans in the First World War. Dr. Gotoh frequently performs as soloist, concertmaster, and principal of numerous ensembles. She regularly premieres and records new works; and also records and performs with numerous renowned artists and on soundtracks, including: Succession, Moonlight, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, Roger Waters, Sting, Doja Cat, Ed Sheeran – performing live on The Grammys, SNL, MTV VMAs, Colbert, Letterman, The White House, Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center, Elbphilharmonie, Musikverein Vienna, Newport Folk Festival, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Aspen, Banff, to name a few. She was the original violinist-violist in Hamilton: An American Musical on Broadway, Original Cast Recording, and Movie. Dr. Gotoh holds dual-degree Doctorates in both Violin and Viola Performance. She is currently on faculty at Longy School of Music of Bard College, teaches workshops through Silkroad Connect and Kennedy Center’s Turnaround Arts, and has taught workshops and classes in Taiwan, China, Canada and colleges and institutions across the US. Dr. Gotoh is inspired by her community activism, language, literature, cooking, writing, visual arts, film, swimming, and exploring cultures everywhere.

Visit Mario Gotoh’s Website

Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi has been described as a “musical alchemist” and a “musical polyglot” by the press. He left his native Italy to study jazz piano and early music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

He moved to Ireland in 2004, where he’s currently based and where he is active as a freelance musician. He is equally at home playing with jazz veterans Dave Liebman and Bill Frisell as he is with Irish traditional sean-nós singer Roisin El Safty and with tarantella specialist Lucilla Galeazzi. Turrisi has toured with Bobby McFerrin, played baroque operas with ensemble L’Arpeggiata, toured with the Silkroad Ensemble, interpreted the music of Steve Reich with Bang on a Can All Stars, accompanied flamenco star Pepe El Habichuela and Greek singer Savina Yannatou.

He has released five critically acclaimed albums as a leader and two as co-leader (Tarab, a cross boundary innovative ensemble that blends Irish and Mediterranean traditional music, and Zahr, a project that looks at connections between southern Italian traditional music and Arabic music).

His latest piano solo album Northern Migrations was described as “delicate, wistful, and wholly engrossing” by the Irish Times. Since 2018 he collaborates with American Grammy- winning singer and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens, on a duo project that seamlessly combines music from the Mediterranean with music from the African diaspora in the Americas. In 2019 Giddens and Turrisi released their critically acclaimed duo album There Is No Other. The album single “I’m On My Way” was nominated for a 2020 Grammy. Their 2021 second duo album They’re Calling Me Home was nominated for two Grammy awards and won as best folk album at the 2022 Grammy Awards.

His long list of collaborations include Bobby McFerrin, Dave Liebman, Gianluigi Trovesi, Bill Frisell, Rhiannon Giddens, the Silkoad Ensemble, Nils Landgren, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Gavin Bryars, Gabriele Mirabassi, Rolando Villazon, Lisa Hannigan, Savina Yannatou, Maria Pia de Vito, Theodosii Spassov, The King’s Singers, Veronique Gens, Philippe Jaroussky, Pepe el Habichuela, and Lucilla Galeazzi.

Visit Francesco Turrisi’s Website

Michael Abels is best-known for his scores for the Oscar-winning film Get Out, and for Jordan Peele’s Us, for which Abels won the World Soundtrack Award, the Jerry Goldsmith Award, a Critics Choice nomination, an Image Award nomination, and multiple critics awards. The hip-hop influenced score for US was short-listed for the Oscar, and was even named “Score of the Decade” by online publication The Wrap.

As a concert composer, Abels has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, and the Sphinx Organization, among others. His orchestral works have been performed by the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and many more. As guest conductor of Get Out in Concert, Abels has led orchestras like the National Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony. Several of his orchestral works have been recorded by the Chicago Sinfonietta on the Cedille label, including Delights & Dances and Global Warming. Abels is co-founder of the Composers Diversity Collective, an advocacy group to increase visibility of composers of color in film, game and streaming media. Upcoming projects include the ballet for concert band Falling Sky for Butler University, At War with Ourselves for the Kronos Quartet, and the Hugh Jackman film Bad Education for HBO.

Visit Michael Abels’ Website

The acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens uses her art to excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present. A MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, Giddens co-founded the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops. She most recently won a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for They’re Calling Me Home, and was also nominated for Best American Roots Song for “Avalon” from They’re Calling Me Home, which she made with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. Giddens is now a two-time winner and eight-time Grammy nominee for her work as a soloist and collaborator.

They’re Calling Me Home was released by Nonesuch last April and has been widely celebrated by the NY Times, NPR Music, NPR, Rolling Stone, People, Associated Press and far beyond, with No Depression deeming it “a near perfect album…her finest work to date.” Recorded over six days in the early phase of the pandemic in a small studio outside of Dublin, Ireland – where both Giddens and Turrisi live – They’re Calling Me Home manages to effortlessly blend the music of their native and adoptive countries: America, Italy, and Ireland. The album speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death.

Giddens’s lifelong mission is to lift people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased, and to work toward a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins. Pitchfork has said of her work, “few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration,” and Smithsonian Magazine calls her “an electrifying artist who brings alive the memories of forgotten predecessors, white and black.”

Among her many diverse career highlights, Giddens has performed for the Obamas at the White House and received an inaugural Legacy of Americana Award from Nashville’s National Museum of African American History in partnership with the Americana Music Association. Her critical acclaim includes in-depth profiles by CBS Sunday Morning, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and NPR’s Fresh Air, among many others.

Giddens was featured in Ken Burns’s Country Music series, which aired on PBS, where she spoke about the African American origins of country music. She is also a member of the band Our Native Daughters with three other black female banjo players, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell, and Amythyst Kiah, and co-produced their debut album Songs of Our Native Daughters (2019), which tells stories of historic black womanhood and survival.

Giddens is in the midst of a tremendous 2022. She recently announced the publication of her first book, Build a House (October 2022),  Lucy Negro Redux, the ballet Giddens wrote the music for, had its premiere at the Nashville Ballet (premiered in 2019 and toured in 2022), and the libretto and music for Giddens’ original opera, Omar, based on the autobiography of the enslaved man Omar Ibn Said, premiered at the Spoleto USA Festival in May. Giddens is also curating a four-concert Perspectives series as part of Carnegie Hall’s 2022–2023 season. Named Artistic Director of Silkroad Ensemble in 2020, Giddens is developing a number of new programs for that ensemble, including one inspired by the history of the American transcontinental railroad and the cultures and music of its builders.

As an actor, Giddens had a featured role on the television series Nashville. for the Obamas at the White House and received an inaugural Legacy of Americana Award from Nashville’s National Museum of African American History in partnership with the Americana Music Association. Her critical acclaim includes in-depth profiles by CBS Sunday Morning, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and NPR’s Fresh Air, among many others.

Giddens was featured in Ken Burns’s Country Music series, which aired on PBS, where she spoke about the African American origins of country music. She is also a member of the band Our Native Daughters with three other black female banjo players, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell, and Amythyst Kiah, and co-produced their debut album Songs of Our Native Daughters (2019), which tells stories of historic black womanhood and survival.

Giddens is in the midst of a tremendous 2022. She recently announced the publication of her first book, Build a House (October 2022),  Lucy Negro Redux, the ballet Giddens wrote the music for, had its premiere at the Nashville Ballet (premiered in 2019 and toured in 2022), and the libretto and music for Giddens’ original opera, Omar, based on the autobiography of the enslaved man Omar Ibn Said, premiered at the Spoleto USA Festival in May. Giddens is also curating a four-concert Perspectives series as part of Carnegie Hall’s 2022–2023 season. Named Artistic Director of Silkroad Ensemble in 2020, Giddens is developing a number of new programs for that ensemble, including one inspired by the history of the American transcontinental railroad and the cultures and music of its builders.

As an actor, Giddens had a featured role on the television series Nashville.

Visit Rhiannon Giddens’ Website