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 their ancestors and predecessors. The San Diego Tribune has hailed her performances as “lyrical and haunting...hair-raising and unsettling.” Joy was born in Houston, Texas, into a creative family that has shaped who she is today.

Joy has presented her original work at The The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum for American Art, Hauser & Wirth, among many other venues. She has been commissioned by The National Sawdust, Long Beach Opera, JACK Quartet, Gaudeamus Festival, and the I&I Foundation. Joy has been featured in festivals like the La Biennale di Venezia, Banlieues Bleues festival, A'Larme Festival, Cologne Jazz Week, and many more. Joy holds a bachelor’s degree in Bassoon Performance from the Peabody Conservatory and a Graduate Performance Diploma from the Mannes School of Music. In addition, Joy Guidry is the winner of the 2021 Berlin Prize for Young Artists. She is currently playing on a Heckel Bassoon number 6101.

Her latest record, 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. With this new album, she shifts away from free jazz and into a meditative, ambient realm. In the live performance, Guidry 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.