SILKROAD, the acclaimed international musical collective founded by renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, has a new face — and a fresh sense of purpose.

    Grammy-winning folk singer and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens is Silkroad’s new artistic director, taking the baton from Ma, who founded the group in 1998 and stepped down as artistic director in 2017. The 43-year-old North Carolina native is the first female artist to lead Silkroad and becomes the only person to hold the artistic director position after Ma.

    The Boston-based organization is known not just for its touring ensemble comprised of world-class musicians from all over the globe, but also for its efforts to use the arts to bridge differences across races, countries and cultures.

    “My keenest desire for Silkroad is a sharpening and reinterpretation of what it means for the ‘right now,’” Giddens said in a statement, adding: “What is more American than the gathering of influences from disparate areas of the globe to create something unique and fantastic?”

    She makes her debut Wednesday evening with “Recitals From the World Stage,” a virtual presentation prerecorded for Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.

    Ma called Giddens “an extraordinary human being and musician.” “She lives Silkroad’s values, at once rooted in history and its many musics, and is an advocate for the contemporary voices that can move us to work together for a better world,” he said.

    “In addition to her enormous musical talent, she fosters an immense social consciousness and creates unity through her art,” said Kathy Fletcher, Silkroad’s executive director.

    Silkroad has recorded seven albums, including “Sing Me Home,” which won a Grammy in 2016 for best world music. Founded to “seek and practice radical cultural collaboration in many forms,” it holds training workshops and residency programs for music teachers and musicians around the globe. The group takes its name from the ancient Silk Road trade route that linked China to the West, with the two hemispheres exchanging not only goods but ideas. Giddens has been a Silkroad collaborator since 2016.

    Giddens, the daughter of a white father and a Black mother who married three years after the Supreme Court struck down all bans on interracial marriage in 1967, has won accolades for spotlighting African-American contributions to banjo, bluegrass and folk music.

    Giddens is a founding member of the country, blues and old-time music band Carolina Chocolate Drops, where she is the lead singer, fiddle player and banjo player. She won a Grammy in 2011 for best traditional folk album with the string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, and last year, she was the first recipient of the Americana Music Association’s inaugural Legacy of Americana Award.(SD-Agencies)