All Aboard: Silkroad’s ‘American Railroad’ Rolls Through Five Northeast Cities In November 2025

Silkroad will launch a five-city November 2025 tour of its reimagined American Railroad program, led by the Silkroad Ensemble with pipa virtuosa and founding member Wu Man. Dates include performances in New England and the Mid-Atlantic.

Conceived by Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens, American Railroad highlights the overlooked roles of Indigenous and African Americans alongside Chinese, Irish, Japanese, and other immigrant communities in building the U.S. transcontinental and connecting railways. The project examines how the railroad both unified and divided communities it touched.

The 2025 edition presents an intimate eight-piece lineup led by Wu Man. Instrumentation includes pipa, guitar, bass, tabla, Japanese flutes and percussion, violin, Chinese winds and percussion, and accordion with frame drums. The program includes original works by Silkroad artists and guest composers, amplifying the voices of the laborers who built the railroads and those displaced by them.

Offstage offerings extend the story through a podcast, an educational curriculum, an album, and the PBS series My Music With Rhiannon Giddens (Season 2). PRX has also released a one-hour special centered on Chinese and Japanese immigrant experiences.

Musicians: Wu Man on pipa; Niwel Tsumbu on guitar; Shawn Conley on bass; Sandeep Das on tabla; Kaoru Watanabe on Japanese flutes and percussion; Michi Wiancko on violin; Guo Yazhi on Chinese winds and percussion; and Francesco Turrisi on accordion and frame drums.

2025 American Railroad Tour Dates And Venues

• November 7, 2025 — Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield, CT
  • Educational: Open rehearsal for area public school students on November 6 (not open to the public).
• November 8, 2025 — Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
• November 9, 2025 — Presented by FirstWorks at The VETS, Providence, RI
  • Educational/Community: Virtual discussion with Silkroad artists on October 30 (open to the public with registration).
  • Student matinee on November 9 (not open to the public).
• November 13, 2025 — The Colonial Theatre, Keene, NH
• November 16, 2025 — The Music Center at Strathmore, North Bethesda, MD

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma founded Silkroad in 1998 as a model for cultural collaboration across borders. The organization today operates under Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens and Executive Director Ben Hartley, pairing social-impact and educational work with new music from the Grammy Award–winning Silkroad Ensemble, a leader in world music collaboration.

More information is available at silkroad.org.