NYTimes Best Jazz Albums 2022
“Mixing gospel harmonies, simmering post-hip-hop instrumentals and wounded balladry, the music shudders with outrage and vision.”
(New York Times)
About the Album
Released April 15, 2022 on Stretch Music and Ropeadope
Composer, pianist, vocalist, and multidisciplinary artist Samora Pinderhughes released his new album, GRIEF. Resplendent with lush instrumentals and careful lyricism, the record offers a powerful meditation on loss, social precarity, and possibilities for liberation.
Metropolis Ensemble / Argus Quartet made contributions to the track “Hope Intro,” and fellow Metropolis artist Immanuel Wilkins (saxophone) performed on “Masculinity.”
GRIEF is the most recent addition to Pinderhughes’ expansive multimedia undertaking, The Healing Project, which opened in Spring 2022 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Grief was created with support from Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works program. Additional support provided by New Music USA and Carnegie Hall. GRIEF is also a part of The Healing Project, a multidisciplinary project created & developed by Samora Pinderhughes. The Healing Project is produced by Anna Deavere Smith, Glenn Ligon, and Vijay Iyer, in conjunction with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Samora Pinderhughes is a Yamaha Piano Artist.
Recent Reviews
“I think a lot of times, we don't ask people about their experiences with these systems, like, What's your day to day reality? What are you facing? How do you heal yourself?”
Samora Pinderhughes
GRIEF is the first Metropolis collaboration with Samora Pinderhughes and The Healing Project: “purposefully upending all the current systems to create new ones.”
WATCH: Official music videos and performances from the album GRIEF.
Project In-Depth
GRIEF is the most personal part of The Healing Project for Pinderhughes, who wrote all the songs and makes his official debut as a singer on the album. Written in the spirit of music from the ’60’s and ’70s by artists like Nina Simone and Curtis Mayfield who made powerful statements about life and social justice through their music, GRIEF aims to evoke feeling through texture and harmony by underlining the human voice as a bonding agent.
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The Cry
Kingly (feat. Lucas Pino)
Election Time
Holding Cell
Internal Geographies (feat. Brad Allen Williams)
Time Loop
Masculinity (feat. Immanuel Wilkins)
Rise Up (feat. Marcus Gilmore)
Breath
Grief (feat. Boom Bishop)
Refrain for Keith Lamar (feat. Clovis Nicolas)
Stare Straight Ahead
Hope Intro (feat. Argus Quartet)
Hope (feat. Elena Pinderhughes, Nio Norwood, & Jehbreal Jackson)
Hum | A Prayer
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Samora Pinderhughes - piano, vocals, wurlitzer, production, arrangements
Jehbreal Jackson - vocals
Nio Levon - vocals
Marcus Gilmore - drums
Boom Bishop - electric bass & sonics
Clovis Nicolas - upright bass
Brad Allen Williams - guitars
Elena Pinderhughes - flute
Immanuel Wilkins - alto saxophone
Lucas Pino - tenor saxophone & bass clarinet
Argus Quartet (courtesy of Metropolis Ensemble) - string quartet
Jack DeBoe - production & engineering
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GRIEF is the most recent addition to Pinderhughes’ expansive multimedia undertaking, The Healing Project, which opens this spring at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Produced by visionary artists Anna Deavere Smith, Vijay Iyer, and Glenn Ligon, The Healing Project is designed in three parts – exhibition, digital archive, and album. The project documents experiences of incarceration, structural violence, and policing in the United States, while highlighting strategies of community care that imagine and nourish another world. “It’s my attempt to communicate an abolitionist vision,” Pinderhughes says.
Drawing on a lineage of scholar-activists like Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Mariame Kaba, Pinderhughes understands abolition more as an ongoing collective practice than a hope for the distant future. The Healing Project reflects that ethic: developed over eight years, the project is based on Pinderhughes’ interviews with 100 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated narrators, and involves sustained collaboration with over 30 artists working across a range of mediums. “What took a long time,” Pinderhughes notes, “was just us supporting each other. Talking to folks about their stories, and then life comes up, so you have to support people, and they have to support you.”
The Healing Project exhibition in YBCA’s Gallery 1 will hold a constellation of films, sound works, physical pieces, and contributed artworks all exploring the realities of trauma & healing from incarceration, detention, and structural violence. Everything starts from the interviews, which took 6 years for Samora to record in 15 different states. These interviews scored to music are the centerpiece of the Sound Room, at the heart of the exhibition. The rest of the space is filled up with pieces that answer questions too big for just the sound to hold, all built with different collaborators from around the country. There are 5 different film pieces; original wood works; physical works including altars & murals; and contributions from established artists including Titus Kaphar and currently incarcerated artists including Pitt Panther.
The exhibition will also include workshops and events, all completely free & open to the public, and free performances featuring Samora and special guests throughout the run.
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Music & Lyrics written & arranged by Samora Pinderhughes
Music to the song “Internal Geographies” co-written by Brad Allen Williams, Music to the song “Grief” co-written by Burniss Travis (aka Boom Bishop) .
All music brought to life alongside and with the ensemble .
Produced by Samora Pinderhughes & Jack DeBoe
Executive Produced by Samora Pinderhughes, Jack DeBoe & Jesse Sachs
Music recorded at Figure 8 in pandemic protocols
Engineered & Mixed by Jack DeBoe
Co-engineered by Lily Wen
Mastered by Greg Calbi & Steve Fallone at Sterling Sound
Creative Direction by Christian Padron, Ray Neutron, Jesse Sachs, and Samora Pinderhughes
Samora Pinderhughes
Composer
Samora Pinderhughes is a composer, pianist/vocalist, interdisciplinary artist, and sur-realist whose work delves into all the things our society tries to hide - about its history, about its structures, and about the individual and daily things we all experience but don’t know how to talk about. His art is an invitation to feel things deeply, and to think deeply about how we all live. He is known for his honest lyrics, his harmonic language, his vulnerable visuals, his sociopolitical commentary, and his commitment to making art that is of use to everyday life. More info »
