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My Music with Rhiannon Giddens return this week

By Bill Moss, Published: April 29, 2025

My Music with Rhiannon Giddens returns to PBS this week with six new episodes.
Produced by the Hendersonville-based Will & Deni McIntyre Foundation, the season was filmed at various iconic venues around Ireland and features outstanding guest artists who, like Rhiannon Giddens herself, have made Ireland their home.
Friends and supporters of the McIntyres were invited to a preview of the season, featuring Giddens and clips from the shows, on Tuesday at Flat Rock Cinema.
 

In each half-hour episode of music and conversation, host Rhiannon introduces viewers to performers she has met on the current Irish music scene who may be less familiar to international audiences. Irish music embraces diverse influences from abroad; Rhiannon believes that traditional music stays vital and relevant when it is infused with new energy from new generations and incoming cultures. 

“The Ireland of today is a thriving, modern society that has welcomed cultures from around the world while maintaining a firm appreciation for its own musical history,” Rhiannon says. “It’s an exciting place to be a musician!”

Featured artists include native Irish singer Róisín Elsafty, Irish and Sierra Leonean singer-songwriter Loah, banjo master Enda Scahill, piper and flutist Emer Mayock, Congolese guitar virtuoso Niwel Tsumbu and folksinger and social activist Karan Casey.

Locations for the season range from well-known Whelan’s club in Dublin to the family farm of Niwel Tsumbu and his wife in West Cork, to the 500-year-old Connolly’s of Leap, the trendy Bridge Street pub in Castlebar, Studio Cuan in Spiddal on Galway Bay, and the Neo-Gothic Kylemore Abbey in Connemara. “Ireland's countryside is as culturally evocative as its music,” says producer Will McIntyre. “When combined, they have a powerful impact on an audience.”

Below is a full list of episodes in Season 3. Check local listings for broadcast airings; episodes are available as free VOD at PBS.orgor with the PBS app for thirty days after the starting stream date. After that, they can be viewed via PBS Passport.

Episode 1: Róisín Elsafty

Stream beginning Thursday, May 1 (View promo) Róisín Elsafty is a native Irish speaker and singer in the sean-nós (“old time”) tradition who comes from a musical family: her mother and sisters are also respected vocalists. But the family’s influences also included Umm Kulthum and the music of Róisín’s father’s Egyptian homeland. Rhiannon visits with Róisín in the Gothic Church at Kylemore Abbey in Connemara.

Episode 2: Loah

Stream beginning Thursday, May 8 (View promo) Loah (Sallay Garnett) is Irish and Sierra Leonean. She is an actor, singer-songwriter, and instrumentalist—as well as a licensed pharmacist! Host Rhiannon visits with Loah at Connolly's of Leap, a legendary 500-year-old pub in West Cork.

Episode 3: Enda Scahill

Stream beginning Thursday, May 15 (View promo) Enda Scahill is a banjo master from Corofin, County Galway. He is a four-time All-Ireland Champion who has performed with The Fureys, Frankie Gavin, and The Chieftains. Rhiannon and Enda are joined by young guitarist Simon Crehan and prize-winning Irish step dancer Stephanie Keane at Studio Cuan in Spiddal on Galway Bay.

Episode 4: Emer Mayock

Stream beginning Thursday, May 22 (View promo) Emer Mayock is a devoted daughter of County Mayo who played tin whistle as a child and now performs on flute and uilleann pipes. She has composed music for the theatre and documentaries. She visits with Rhiannon at one of her favorite performance venues, the Bridge Street pub in Castlebar, County Mayo.

Episode 5: Niwel Tsumbu

Stream beginning Thursday, May 29 (View promo) Niwel Tsumbu is a guitarist and singer who grew up in Kinshasa with the traditional Soukous music of the Congo. He studied classical guitar at a prestigious music school in Central Africa before moving to Ireland, where he married and is raising his family. Rhiannon visits Niwel at his and his wife’s family farm near Kinsale in County Cork.

Episode 6: Karan Casey

Stream beginning Thursday, June 5 (View promo) Karan Casey is an Irish folk singer and a former member of the American-based Irish trad supergroup Solas. She now lives in Cork and performs with her husband, concertina master Niall Vallely. Rhiannon joins them at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork City.

Rhiannon Giddens

Rhiannon Giddens has made a unique career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every performance 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.

Giddens has released three albums under her own name and two in collaboration with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, all on Nonesuch Records. American Railroad, her first album in collaboration with the Silkroad Ensemble, was released in November 2024, and her latest album in collaboration with Justin Robinson, What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow, was just released.

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 will launch 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.” For more information visit rhiannongiddens.com