Samora Pinderhughes' GRIEF Exhibition to Continue With Second Live Performance at The Kitchen at Westbeth

The Kitchen will present GRIEF, the first New York institutional solo exhibition of work by celebrated composer, pianist, vocalist, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary artist Samora Pinderhughes. In GRIEF, Pinderhughes uses his acclaimed album of the same name as the point of departure for a sprawling multimedia presentation including three distinct live performances and screenings of multiple films. Converging songcraft, film, ritual, and conversation, GRIEF grapples with the dense emotion at its core, unfurling the many intimate damages inflicted by mass incarceration and systemic racism; coalescing multiple languages of expression into abolitionist action; and considering the beauty, vulnerability, and complexity with which people heal themselves and each other. Across three months, Pinderhughes' GRIEF opens into an exploration and redefinition of the possibilities of an expanded future for Black and Brown people.

GRIEF is organized by Legacy Russell, The Kitchen's Executive Director & Chief Curator, with Angelique Rosales Salgado, Curatorial Assistant. The project inaugurates the organization's temporary home in the storied West Side Loft at Westbeth, whose expansiveness and openness present a spatial analogue to Pinderhughes' capacious, celestial sonic approach to confronting the heaviness of grief-and offers the artist and his collaborators a springboard for an ambitious, durational exploration.

GRIEF unfolds in three chapters, each focused on a particular theme:

• Healing (November 2022): including the films "Masculinity," in collaboration with RSCK Collective: Ray Neutron, Samora Pinderhughes, Christian Padron, and Kassim Norris; and "Hold That Weight," with Daniel Pfeffer);
• Abolition and Revolution (December 2022): with films "Same Gang," a collaboration with Josh Begley and Saudade Toxosi; "Concussion Protocol," with Josh Begley; and "Officer Involved / For Those Lost," with Josh Begley)
• Grief (January 2023): with films "Process" in collaboration with Christian Padron; and "Hum / A Prayer" in collaboration with Vashni Korin).

Each month, Pinderhughes and a unique lineup of musicians will perform a live show in the installation. Elliott Skinner, June McDoom, Nio Levon, Dani Murcia, Jehbreal Jackson, and more to-be-announced special guests will join him for the first of these, on Thursday, November 10 at 7pm (163 Bank Street, 4th Floor Loft.). There will be evening public installation hours for the exhibition on various dates (schedule below), featuring screenings of the rotating film works. The second performance will be in the daytime on Saturday, December 10, and January 2023 program and performances will be announced as the dates approach.

GRIEF follows and extends from Pinderhughes' The Healing Project, a multi-pronged work that originated with interviews the artist conducted with people of color in 15 U.S. states surrounding experiences of incarceration and structural violence. The album GRIEF-whose songs Pinderhughes reimagines newly for the Westbeth space, complemented by new music-was one element of that project. The New York Times described the recording as a "visionary" work from "one of the most affecting singer-songwriters today, in any genre" that "turn(s) the experience of living in community inside-out, revealing all its personal detail and tension, and giving voice to registers of pain that are commonly shared but not often articulated."

The many voices making up this project include currently and formerly incarcerated contributors such as visual artist Peter Mukuria aka "Pitt Panther" ; Keith LaMar, a writer and poet on death row in Ohio, whom a growing movement, including Pinderhughes and collaborators, are urgently fighting to free; and NYC youth mentor and Columbia Justice scholar Roosevelt "Bliss" Arrington, who was imprisoned on Rikers Island and became a primary interviewee for The Healing Project.

The voices form a "chorus" that filters shared realities, lived experiences, and ideas through a collective process. Pinderhughes describes, "Thinking about this within the framework of the 'chorus' is a way to connect my sonic and living principles. By the chorus, I mean a multiplicity of voices, moving in sync or in communication but all still with their own characteristics, identities and experiences. The concept of the chorus also represents the idea of approaching interlocking issues at the same time; solutions must be approached with a lens that is wide-ranging and forms linkages between structural oppressions, building solidarity between communities that are affected." His collaborative films similarly collage perspectives, layering documentary, found footage, and narrative filmmaking.

Through this collectivized viewpoint, Pinderhughes seeks to create a musical photograph of the present. In the sustained nature of his considerations, he offers a rebuke to white liberalism's myopic and short-lived awakening to structural racism under Trump, asserting that true change would require the unmaking and remaking of all this country's underlying systems. Speaking to the long-term commitment necessary to the dismantling process, the performances aim to actively engage his audience. He envisions performing without a stage, with attendees interspersed among performers and immersed within the sonic and visual world.

Though the chorus that forms this work emerges from the acute pain of American life under white supremacy and the prison industrial complex, Pinderhughes' work lives within softness, gentleness, vulnerability. He strives for "maximum affect and the most emotion possible that can be pulled out of a voice or instrument," and notes musical influences including Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Billy Strayhorn, Thom Yorke, Björk, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, and Bob Dylan.

Beauty and a slowness of process are Pinderhughes' chosen strategies for his ideas, offering a support for holding heaviness. He says, "Slowness, beauty, detail, and duration make people sit with things and live inside them. Grieving, healing, and sustaining movements that can enact substantial change each take time. Often people want to put a timetable on things because of the discomfort of working with and through them."

Legacy Russell, Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen, says, "Samora turns the visuality and language of a Black Americanness inside-out, showing us the vulnerable places where it might hurt in this history, making a call to action for radical self-determination and the power of love. He holds each of us accountable and responsible for the transformation of the world we want to live abundantly within."

Performance, Installation Hours and Screening Schedule

Performance tickets: $5-15 sliding scale (to be released as dates approach)

Thursday, November 10 at 7pm (doors at 6pm) - public opening & first performance

Saturday, December 10 (daytime) - second performance

January 2023 public program & performance dates forthcoming

Evening screening and installation hours (7-9pm): Thursday, November, 17 and Tuesday, November, 29; Tuesday, December 6 and Thursday, December, 15; Thursday, January 12 and Tuesday, January 24

Collaborator Credits

Musical Collaborators from GRIEF, the Album (Musicians Performing Live with Pinderhughes to Be Announced)

Piano, Wurlitzer, Lead Vocals: Samora Pinderhughes

Vocals: Jehbreal Muhammad Jackson, Nio Levon, Elliott Skinner, Dani Murcia

Flute: Elena Pinderhughes

Alto Saxophone: Immanuel Wilkins

Bass Clarinet & Tenor Saxophone: Lucas Pino

String Quartet: Argus Quartet

Drums: Marcus Gilmore

Guitars: Brad Allen Williams

Electric Bass, Sonics: Boom Bishop

Upright Bass: Clovis Nicolas

Production: Jack DeBoe

Choreographer

Amanda Krische

Live Visuals

Christian Padron & Saudade Toxosi

Collaborators in Live Shows

Pitt Panther (set design & artwork)

Keith LaMar (narration & spoken word)

Roosevelt "Bliss" Arrington (conversation & audience direction)

About Samora Pinderhughes

Samora Pinderhughes is a composer, pianist, vocalist, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary artist known for striking intimacy and carefully crafted, radically honest lyrics alongside high-level musicianship. He is also known for using his music to examine sociopolitical issues and fight for change and works in the tradition of the Black surrealists, those who bend word, sound, and image towards the causes of revolution. Pinderhughes is a prison abolitionist and an advocate for process over product. His music is renowned for its emotionality, its honesty about difficult and vulnerable topics, and its careful details in word and sound. As an artist, Pinderhughes' goal is that people will LIVE DIFFERENTLY after experiencing what he makes-that it will affect how they think, how they act, how they relate to others, how they consider their daily relationships to their country and their world. Pinderhughes has collaborated with many artists across boundaries and scenes including Herbie Hancock, Common, Glenn Ligon, Sara Bareilles, Daveed Diggs, Titus Kaphar, and Lalah Hathaway. He works frequently with Common on compositions for music and film, and is featured as a composer, lyricist, vocalist, and pianist on the new albums August Greene and Let Love with Common, Robert Glasper, and Karriem Riggins.

About The Kitchen

As one of New York City's oldest nonprofit alternative art centers (founded as an artist collective in 1971 and formalized as a 501c3 in 1973), The Kitchen is dedicated to offering emerging and established artists opportunities to create and present new work within, and across, the disciplines of dance, film, literature, music, theater, video, and visual art. Recognizing its longstanding legacy for innovation, The Kitchen remains devoted to fostering a community of artists and audiences, offering artists the opportunity to make-and for audiences to engage with-work that pushes the boundaries of artistic disciplines and strengthens meaningful dialogues between the arts and larger culture.

Among the artists who have presented significant work at The Kitchen are Muhal Richard Abrams, Laurie Anderson, ANOHNI, Robert Ashley, Charles Atlas, Kevin Beasley, Beastie Boys, Gretchen Bender, Dara Birnbaum, Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Julius Eastman, Philip Glass, Leslie Hewitt, Darius James, Joan Jonas, Bill T. Jones, Devin Kenny, Simone Leigh, Ralph Lemon, George Lewis, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sarah Michelson, Tere O'Connor, Okwui Okpokwasili, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Sondra Perry, Vernon Reid, Arthur Russell, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Spiegel, Talking Heads, Greg Tate, Cecil Taylor, Urban Bush Women, Danh Vō, Lawrence Weiner, Anicka Yi, and many more.

Website: thekitchen.org

Photo credit: Walter Wlodarczyk