Rhiannon Giddens and the Carolina Chocolate Drops will be inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame this October. "I'm so honored to be part of the 2016 class of inductees into the NC Music Hall of Fame," says Giddens. "Being from North Carolina has been such a big part of what I do and will remain so for the rest of my life; being a mentee of Joe Thompson and starting the Carolina Chocolate Drops along with Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson are among the things of my life that I am most proud of. Happy to be in such good company as the Avett Brothers, David Holt, my fellow Chocolate Drops, and other fine musicians. Carolina forever!"

Austin City Limits has announced a new round of tapings, including Robert Plant, who returns to the show's stage for the first time in more than a decade on March 21, and Rhiannon Giddens, who makes her ACL debut on April 25. The shows will be broadcast at a later date as part of the PBS series Austin City Limits. For information on how to get free passes to the show about a week before the taping, follow the show on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings.

Rhiannon Giddens's debut solo album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, has been named Album of the Year at the inaugural International Folk Music Awards. The winner was announced at the awards ceremony held last night at the 28th Folk Alliance International conference in Kansas City. Giddens is joined by cellist Leyla McCalla and singer-songwriter Bhi Bhiman for a week of US concerts titled Swimming in Dark Waters: Other Voices of the American Experience starting at Oberlin Conservatory this Saturday.

Congratulations to Rhiannon Giddens, who has been nominated for Folk Singer of the Year in the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. The nominees were announced on Mark Radcliffe's Radio 2 Folk Show earlier this evening. The awards show will take place at Royal Albert Hall in London on Wednesday, April 27. Giddens is up for the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for her solo debut album, Tomorrow Is My Turn.

Rhiannon Giddens performed a special set as part of BBC Radio 2's live coverage from Glasgow's Celtic Connections festival: "Last Kind Words" from her album Tomorrow Is My Turn; "Mouth Music," from her new EP, Factory Girl, and the new song called "Come Love Come." Watch the set here. She plays her own Celtic Connections show tonight, then joins Transatlantic Sessions for two nights at Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall and a five-concert tour of the UK. Giddens performs on BBC One TV's Andrew Marr Show this Sunday morning.

Rhiannon Giddens kicks off her 2016 tour with three weeks in Europe, starting at Handelsbeurs in Gent, Belgium, tonight. The tour continues with stops in Cologne, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris, before heading to the UK for Celtic Connections in Glasgow. She then joins artists from both sides of the Atlantic for the Transatlantic Sessions tour across the UK, including a sold-out show at London's Royal Festival Hall. Giddens returns to the US in February to perform Swimming in Dark Waters: Other Voices of the American Experience with Leyla McCalla and Bhi Bhiman in several cities, and takes her solo tour to Japan and Australia in March.

The line-up for the 2016 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, aka Jazz Fest, has been announced, and included among this year's performers are Rhiannon Giddens (April 24) and Punch Brothers (May 1). Jazz Fest runs over seven days across two weekends, April 22–24 and April 28–May 1. The festival will pay tribute to one of the Crescent City's favorite sons, Allen Toussaint, hosted by the Allen Toussaint Band with special guests.

Rhiannon Giddens was the subject of a feature profile on CBS Sunday Morning, looking at her life in music, as a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops; following her show-stopping performance at the Another Day, Another Time concert; and since the release of her Grammy-nominated solo debut album, Tomorrow Is My Turn. "How often can you witness a moment that changes a career?" says Sunday Morning's Martha Teichner of the concert. "Giddens was like a musical explosion onstage. What happened next was like an explosion in her life." Watch it here.

Rhiannon Giddens helped ring in the New Year with a performance on Jools Holland's annual Hootenanny. She gives her always show-stopping performance of "Waterboy" and of the Sister Rosetta Tharpe tune "Up Above My Head," from her solo debut album, Tomorrow Is My Turn. The show aired in the UK on BBC Two on New Year's Eve. You can now watch Giddens's two performance here for a limited time. Giddens was a guest on BBC Radio Scotland's Another Country with Ricky Ross in advance of her European tour, which begins later this month.

NPR Music has announced its Favorite Songs of 2015, including tracks from eight Nonesuch Records releases from The Arcs, Rhiannon Giddens, Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell, Kronos Quartet, Lianne La Havas, Punch Brothers, St Germain, and The Staves, as well as Mbonwana Star's World Circuit release. These are across a broad range of genre lists, including rock, folk/Americana, country, electronic, world, and classical. You can hear them here.

Rhiannon Giddens's new five-song EP Factory Girl, which was first released as a vinyl 10" as part of the Black Friday Record Store Day event, is now available digitally; a limited quantity of the 10" vinyl is also now available in the Nonesuch Store. NPR Music's Ann Powers says: "Deftly curated, gorgeously sung, this EP is America." The EP is culled from the same T Bone Burnett–produced sessions that yielded her solo debut album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, which has been nominated for a Grammy Award and has landed on several lists of the year's best, including those from NPR Music, Rolling Stone, Sunday Times, Uncut, and Mojo. 

Rhiannon Giddens, Emmylou Harris, and Rodney Crowell have made the Los Angeles Times music critic Randy Lewis's list of the Ten Best Albums of 2015. Giddens's Tomorrow Is My Turn is "a tour de force," he writes. "She can sing anything from Southern blues to Celtic folk and French cabaret with equal aplomb, and is shaping up as a first-rate songwriter as well." Harris and Crowell's The Traveling Kind is "a gorgeous reflection on life, hard-won wisdom and celebration from two longtime friends and musical collaborators," says Lewis.