Composer, pianist, and vocalist Samora Pinderhughes writes urgent, poetic and immersive music that responds to the times and fits neatly into no genre, all while putting his heart right on the table. His large-scale projects frequently marry art song, protest song, and raw honesty. San Francisco-born Samora Abayomi Pinderhughes (named for the political leader in Mozambique, Samora Machel) is committed to liberation and art as a foundational part of movement-building, on a similar path of artists from Fela Kuti to Nina Simone, Pete Seeger, and Miriam Makeba. Samora hears music everywhere, and his work often weaves poetry, music, and theatre together as he addresses big ideas like prison reform, racial capitalism, and police brutality in his lyrical and direct radical songwriting.

He studied composition at Juilliard, and also worked with the late pianist and educator Frank Kimbrough, who emphasized to him that the “inner voices are where the tension is at,” which could be applied to both piano arrangements as well as his art. Pinderhughes gravitates toward “take my heart and put it on the table” artists like Thom Yorke and Bjork, as he is also exploring the sonority of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X’s speaking voices and what the voice can reveal.

For him, singing was an accident, because he loved to write. Lately, he has written for string quartet (Grief) and incorporated recorded speech as he recast “The Star-Spangled Banner”, in addition to poignant and beautiful raw songs like “Process” and “No PLCE.” Samora Pinderhughes joins us remotely to perform recent work from his Black Spring EP, along with new work from his song cycle “Grief.”

Set list: “Stare Straight Ahead,” “Gatsby,” “KillWar”

"Stare Straight Ahead": 

Pinderhughes is currently pursuing his PHD in Creative Practice and Critical Iniquiry with Vijay Iyer at Harvard and recently presented “Grief” – a Cycle of Abolitionist songs from Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope, along with a recent appearance on The Kennedy Center's #ArtsAcrossAmerica exploring Music for Abolition. - Caryn Havlik

"Gatsby":

"KillWar":