Hear/Here
Samora Pinderhughes,Nina Chanel Abney, Aja Monet, and Ambrose Akinmusire

Samora Abayomi Pinderhughes is a 25-yr-old composer & pianist, known for large multidisciplinary projects and for his use of music to examine sociopolitical issues. Samora has performed in venues including Carnegie Hall, the White House, MoMA, the Sundance Film Festival, and Monterey Jazz Festival, and has toured internationally with artists including Branford Marsalis, Christian Scott, and Emily King. 

Samora is the creator and composer of The Transformations Suite. He has written music for artists including Kenny Barron and Common; and is the composer for the film “Whose Streets”. He is also a member of Blackout for Human Rights, and was musical director for their 2016 #MLKNow and #JusticeForFlint events.

Combining representation and abstraction, Nina Chanel Abney’s paintings capture the frenetic pace of contemporary culture. Broaching subjects as diverse as race, celebrity, religion, politics, sex, and art history, her works  eschew linear storytelling in lieu of disjointed narratives. The effect is information overload, balanced with a kind of spontaneous order, where time and space are compressed and identity is interchangeable. Her distinctively bold style harnesses the flux and simultaneity that has come to define life in the 21st century.

Born and raised in Oakland, California, Ambrose Akinmusire (pronounced ah-kin-MOO-sir-ee) was a member of the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble when he caught the attention of saxophonist Steve Coleman. Akinmusire was asked to join Coleman’s Five Elements, embarking on a European tour when he was just a 19-year-old student at the Manhattan School of Music. After returning to the West Coast to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Southern California, Akinmusire went on to attend the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles, where he studied with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Terence Blanchard.

In 2007 Akinmusire won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, decided by a panel of judges that included Blanchard, Quincy Jones, Herb Alpert, Hugh Masekela, Clark Terry and Roy Hargrove. That year Akinmusire also won the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition and released his debut album Prelude…To Cora on the Fresh Sound label. He moved back to New York and began performing with the likes of Vijay Iyer, Aaron Parks, Esperanza Spalding and Jason Moran. It was also during this time that he first caught the attention of another discerning listener, Bruce Lundvall, President of Blue Note Records.

Akinmusire’s Blue Note debut When The Heart Emerges Glistening was released in 2011 to rave reviews. The Los Angeles Times praised his “chameleonic tone that can sigh, flutter or soar,” adding that “Akinmusire sounds less like a rising star than one that was already at great heights and just waiting to be discovered.” DownBeat described his playing as “spectacular and not at all shy — muscular, driving, with a forward sound, pliant phrasing and a penchant for intervallic leaps,” concluding that “clearly something very special and personal is at work here, a vision of jazz that’s bigger than camps, broader and more intellectually restless than blowing sessions.”

Aja Monet is a poet, singer and performer. The youngest individual to win the legendary Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title, she is recognized for combining her spellbound voice and powerful imagery on stage. Her books of poetry are My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, Inner-City Chants & Cyborg Cyphers, and The Black Unicorn Sings. She collaborated with poet/musician Saul Williams on the book Chorus: a literary mixtape. Her first CD, Scared to Make Love/Scared Not To was independently released through Bandcamp. Monet has performed at the Town Hall Theater, the Apollo Theater, the United Nations, and the NAACP’s Barack Obama Inaugural event.

Larry Ossei-Mensah is a Ghanaian-American curator and cultural critic who uses contemporary art and culture as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. He has organized exhibitions and collaborations with artists at commercial and nonprofit spaces, including: Firelei Báez, Ruby Amanze, Hugo McCloud, Brendan Fernandes and Peter Williams. He has advocated for and written on some of the most dynamic visual artists working today: such as Derrick Adams, Mickalene Thomas, Kehinde Wiley, Lorna Simpson and street artist JR.

Ossei-Mensah is also the Co-Founder of ARTNOIR, a global collective of culturalists who design multimodal experiences aimed to engage this generation’s dynamic and diverse creative class. ARTNOIR participated in a number of collaborations with artists, authors and organizations such as Wangechi Mutu, Yaa Gyasi, Hank Willis Thomas, Knopf, Random House, NY Times, Harvard, NYU, Tumblr, Black Lives Matter to name a few. Ossei-Mensah recently was the 2017 Critic-in Residence at ART OMI and currently serves as a mentor in the New Museum’s incubator program NEW INC. in addition to being a member of MoMA’s Friends of Education. He recently co-curated  an exhibition with Susan Cross, Allison Janae Hamilton: PITCH, currently on view at Mass MoCA. This summer Ossei-Mensah will be co-curating group show in Rome, Italy featuring Derrick Adams, Firelei Baez, Abigail DeVille, Paul Anthony Smith, Alexandria Smith and William Villalongo. You can follow Larry Ossei-Mensah at @YOUNGGLOBAL (Instagram/Twitter).

ARTNOIR is a global collective of culturalists who design experiences aimed to engage this generation’s dynamic and diverse creative community. We offer an alternative perspective to the traditional arts narrative, support the freedom of artistic expression for all and provide a platform for bold acts of creativity and storytelling.