Yasmin Williams

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Ebru Yildiz

Yasmin Williams and guitar.

Yasmin Williams

On the new album Acadia, guitarist and composer Yasmin Williams offers nine contemplative new songs that inspire uplifting feelings…a very welcome gleam of hope in today’s fractured American culture. Her hypnotic fingerpicking on guitar (along with kora, banjo, bass and harp guitar on the album) should be a shimmery delight in the acoustic space of the Stoughton Opera House.

media release: Composer and guitarist Yasmin Williams released her new album, Acadia, via Nonesuch Records, on Oct. 4. Her most sonically expansive work to date, Acadia, which The Bluegrass Situation calls “a masterwork,” comprises nine original, mostly instrumental, tracks written and produced by Williams, and featuring her on various guitars, banjo, calabash drum, tap shoes, and kora. Williams is joined on the album by collaborators including Immanuel Wilkins on saxophone, Dom Flemons on rhythm bones, Aoife O’Donovan on vocals, William Tyler on guitar, and many others—creating a folk music that reflects the wide range of musical influences that have inspired her throughout her life.

A native of northern Virginia, Yasmin Williams has received critical acclaim from outlets such as Pitchfork, which included her in its list of 25 New and Rising Artists Shaping the Future of Music in 2023, and NPR Music, which named her its Breakthrough Artist of 2021, saying: “Yasmin Williams treats her guitar like a playground. She taps the wood of the instrument, fingertaps the fret—on other songs, she taps dance shoes, plays the kora or a thumb piano while playing the guitar.” The outlet further noted the “joy and possibility she brings to the guitar … This music goes back to Black blues guitarists; she’s reclaiming, but she’s also staking her claim at the same time.”

“Acadia has several meanings,” says Williams. “A place of rural peace and pastoral poetry (Italian), a refuge or idyllic place, (Greek and Italian), fertile land (Mi'kmaq), a place of plenty (French) ... all of this relates to the ethos of this album. The songs are seeds I planted, and the seeds grew into the album, Acadia: a place of peace, a place where creativity can blossom, a place where everyone can fit in together and collaborate effectively, a place where the fruits of my own labor in music can fully flourish without judgment or prejudice. One of my visions for this record was to expand the potential for current folk music to encourage collaboration across various genres. Blurring those somewhat arbitrary lines has been a natural tendency for me since I started writing music at twelve years old and Acadia is a full circle moment.”

“Nobody plays the guitar like Yasmin Williams. [Acadia] takes her sound into new territory … Worth every minute of an almost four-year wait.” —The Fader

“These nine original tracks are so full of imagination and life-enhancing radiance that you could wallow in their fragrance all day. The technique is dazzling … Gorgeous and then some.” —Uncut

“Williams’ new full-length, Acadia, asserts that [Yasmin Williams] can’t be pigeonholed ... That her spellbinding fretwork is catching such widespread attention is only a consequence of timeless prowess.” —Stereogum