Joy Guidry: Five Prayers in Five Movements // A Space for Sound (Rena Anakwe)

Bassoonist melds sound, spirit, and radical self-expression, opened by solo improvisations on tapes, voice, synths, and samples.

Joy Guidry’s Five Prayers is an intuitive convergence of sound, spirit, and radical self-expression. A celebrated voice in experimental and avant-garde music spaces, Guidry pushes sonic boundaries rooted in Black sonic traditions. Her newest album, Five Prayers, shifts away from free jazz and into a meditative, ambient realm. Guidry’s live performance blends bassoon with low rumbling synths, warm electronic sounds, praise breaks, distortion, and heavy bass that reflect the artist’s lived experience as a Black trans woman from the South. Five Prayers is a profound act of self-exploration and liberation, offering audiences a raw, vulnerable, and transcendent musical journey.

Joy Guidry bassoon, electronics
Scott Li violin, synth

“With productions that sound as if they belong to a film soundtrack, Texas’ Joy Guidry is crafting elegant and joyous music that sits somewhere at the intersection of ambient, jazz, and experimental.” – Mixmag

“Joy Guidry’s music is an evocation of prayer … [that] sits at the nexus between Black classical music, modern European traditions, alt soul, jazz, and beyond.” – Clash Magazine

A Space for Sound (Rena Anakwe), opens the evening with a solo improvisational sound performance, weaving together handmade cassette tape loops, voice, synth textures, samples, and field recordings.

A Space for Sound electronics, voice

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Joy Guidry is a bassoonist, versatile improviser, performance artist, and composer of experimental, daring new works that embody a deep love of storytelling; Joy’s music channels her inner child in honor of her ancestors and predecessors. Joy was born in Houston, Texas, into a creative family that has shaped who she is today. Joy is the founder of Jaid Records, which is a record label that focuses on experimental ambient music and free jazz. Jaid Records was founded in October of 2024, and currently has released her third album titled Five Prayers.

Joy has presented her original work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Park Avenue Armory, Kraftwerk, Whitney Museum for American Art, Hauser & Wirth, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Cafe Oto, The Kitchen, Redcat, among many other venues. She has been commissioned by The National Sawdust, JACK Quartet, Gaudeamus Festival, and the I&I Foundation. Joy has been featured in festivals like Berlin Atonal, La Biennale di Venezia, London jazz Festival, Banlieues Bleues festival, A’Larme Festival, Cologne Jazz Week, Dripping Festival, Big Ears Festival, and many more. Joy Guidry is the winner of the 2021 Berlin Prize for Young Artists. She is currently playing on a Heckel Bassoon number 6101.

A Space for Sound (Rena Anakwe) is a Nigerian-Canadian-American interdisciplinary artist, poet, and healer based in Brooklyn, New York. Using sound, visuals, and scent to explore where and how traditional healing practices, spirituality, and performance can connect and fracture, her deeper inquiry is how reconnecting to nature can help us to understand and mend these fractures, not only for ourselves but in relation to one another. Currently, she is a Community Member of NEW INC’s Y13 cohort and was a Y12 member in the Extended Realities track building SENSORHEUM, an online platform, portal and community that connects people to healing experiences in-person and online. Under the moniker ‘A Space for Sound’, Anakwe has released albums through label and collective PTP and RVNG Intl’. She is a resident of the deep listening series, Planetarium, co-founded by Justin Carter & Eamon Harkin.