Grammy Award-nominated funk, art rock and new wave pioneer Nona Hendryx was the inaugural recipient of the Joe’s Pub Vanguard Residency. Joe’s Pub honored her career as a performer, producer, writer, curator, innovator and mentor, with a year of monthly programming in 2018.  From January through December, Hendryx curated and/or performed in shows that featured not only her body of work, but those of the many multidisciplinary artists who she has influenced (and who continue to influence her).

Judy Collins has inspired audiences with sublime vocals, boldly vulnerable songwriting, personal life triumphs, and a firm commitment to social activism. In the 1960s, she evoked both the idealism and steely determination of a generation united against social and environmental injustices. Five decades later, her luminescent presence shines brightly as new generations bask in the glow of her iconic 55-album body of work, and heed inspiration from her spiritual discipline to thrive in the music industry for half a century. Collins is the 2019 recipient of the Joe's Pub Vanguard Award & Residency.

Laurie Anderson is one of America’s most renowned and daring creative pioneers. She is best known for her multimedia presentations and innovative use of technology.  As writer, director, visual artist, and vocalist, she has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater, and experimental music. Anderson has published seven books and her visual work has been presented in major museums around the world. She is the 2020 recipient of the Joe's Pub Vanguard Award & Residency.

Barbara Maier Gustern exerted an improbable influence over New York’s overlapping music scenes, guiding cabaret performers, stage actors and rock stars to get the most out of their voices. [She was] the grandmother who wore dominatrix gear to perform as a go-go dancer at a playwright’s birthday party; who left her friends in the dust as she ran to catch a subway; who danced on top of a table at the cabaret theater Joe’s Pub. 
-- The New York Times

J. Hoard is a Brooklyn-based artist. In one performance you are given the core of the Black church and the allure of “The Great White Way” (Broadway). His original compositions and arrangements easily shift genres to articulate his vivid songwriting. This eclecticism has yielded songwriting collaborations with artists such as Black Coffee on his Grammy-winning "Subconsciously" album, Chance the Rapper (on his Grammy-winning “Coloring Book” album), Brasstracks, and hip-hop royalty Jean Grae & Quelle Chris. Additionally, he has worked closely with a host of jazz/experimental artists such as Kassa Overall, Jose James, TheLessonGK, and music legend Meshell Ndegeocello (singer on her Grammy-nominated “Ventriloquism” album).

Lama El Homaïssi (SHIM:NYC Resident for 2022) is a Lebanese performer, writer and voiceover artist currently based in New York City. Lama started her career in entertainment working for years as a television writer in Lebanon, creating original shows for the Sony Pictures Television Arabia and Talpa Middle East catalogs, developing commissions for clients, as well as adapting productions to the SWANA region (most notably The Voice and So You Think You Can Dance).

In 2017, Lama pursued her MFA in Musical Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee where she honed her skills in acting and storytelling through song, then began developing and performing her own work for the stage. Lama’s writing has also been featured in the Brooklyn Rail and her essay on Storytelling as an Act of Survival has been published in HowlRound Theatre Commons.

A writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center and at festivals including: Explore the North Festival, Leeuwarden, Netherlands; Hekayeh Festival, Abu Dhabi; International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen; Ocean Space, Venice; International Poetry Festival of Romania; Question of Will, Slovakia; Poesiefestival, Berlin; and the 2015 Venice Biennale. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, a Whiting Award (2016) and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), as well as grants and fellowships from the Howard Foundation, Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, among others. She lives in Harlem.

The K in Olivia K, Khe-ra, means "Daughter of the Sun," which perfectly describes her joyous outlook on life and fiery disposition. Olivia K has lived in Brooklyn her whole life, except four years uptown at Columbia University. Her iconic voice and original writing can be heard on Netflix, BET, and MTV as well as in commercials, and most unusually, fire escapes of NYC. As the DIY Funk Queen of East New York, she has led her band Olivia K and the Parkers in a sold-out show at Joe's Pub, and has her anthem "Native New Yorker" archived in the permanent archives of Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

Roshni Samlal is a New York-based Trinidadian tabla player who has studied within the Farukhbad, Benares and Punjab gharanas or schools of indian classical percussion. She is a prolific local teacher and performer, both in traditional tabla solo and classical accompanist contexts as well as a variety of jazz and chamber ensembles. Roshni also explores creating sound design landscapes and beat production as a context for presenting tabla solos. She is the lead curator and producer of the Ragini Festival which focuses on spotlighting the work of artists engaged in traditional folk and innovative arts within the further reaches of the South Asian diaspora, focusing on Indo-Caribbean heritage.

Sita Chay is a violinist, composer, and producer who won a 2017 Latin Grammy Award for Best Mariachi Album, as violinist with the Flor de Toloache. She is also a recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts Women's Fund, New Music USA’s Creator Development Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Creative Engagement Grant.

Ms. Chay has founded various projects over the years - she is the director of the Korean Shaman Music Ritual, SaaWee, which was received by international critics as a “delicate powerhouse”. SaaWee's Return of Songbirds debuted at the Lincoln Center lawn as part of #retartstage project in 2021 and was invited to Ars Electronica Festival 2021. SaaWee won the California Music Video Awards 2022 in Best World Music category.

Her leadership as a director of Cosmopolis Collective-Immigrant Story Telling Band was featured in New York Times immigrant panel and many other media. She has appeared as a speaker and a lecturer at Chamber Music America Conference 2019, New York Musical Festival 2018, Seoul National University, Colombia National University, and Joong Ang University.

2013 | Claw-hammer banjo player, composer and singer Abigail Washburn premiered Post-American Girl, a theatrical event exploring US-China relations through the lens of folk music.

2020-2021 | Musical traditions yearning for each other across race, class, and nation grace Alicia Hall Moran’s meditation on the classic Motown songbook — a cinematic, movement-based aria. the motown project reimagines Motor City poetics in a study of desire and infatuation only soul and opera embodied by one chanteuse could endure.

2012 | One of America’s greatest musical treasures, Allen Toussaint presented A Southern Night featuring songs from the album as well as songs that relate to the Toussaint Family.

2012 | Angelique Kidjo and director Jo Bonney revisited the legends and tales of Angelique’s childhood, with a poignant perspective on the history of her native country.

2019 | Bronx native Alynda Segarra spreads a new kind of roots-conscious folk music across the country from her adopted hometown of New Orleans, often with her band Hurray for the Riff Raff. The Navigator is a concept album about gentrification and diasporic identity by Alynda Segarra (Hurray for the Riff Raff) originally released in 2017. Segarra teamed up with playwright C. Julian Jiménez (Oso Fabuloso & The Bear Backs), to bring the story of the Navigator to life on stage.

2022 - 2023 | Bahia Watson + Liza Paul continue to explore the absurdities of life through an afro-caribbean feminist lens with their bashment* circus variety show, MASHUP Ting! *Bashment (n): jamaican vernacular for a really good party

2013 | Rock Bottom was written by Bridget Everett with Tony-winning writing duo Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman and Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys.

2022 - 2023 | Chris Pattishall & Vuyo Sotashe are developing a new project as their New York Voices commission.

2015 | Daniel Alexander Jones developed Black Light, an evening-length performance for Jones’s musician persona Jomama Jones. Black Light featured music composed by Jones with Bobby Halvorson, and arranged for performance with musical direction by Samora Pinderhughes.

2014 | Daniel Breaker has been seen on Broadway, in film, and on TV. He brings a soulful mix of tunes from all around the musical spectrum, and offers up refreshing new twists on classic soul, R&B, rock and more.

2022 - 2023 | Daniel J. Watts & Nick Blaemire began to develop a new work, Quixote, as their New York Voices commission.

2014 | Dawn Landes (music and lyrics) and director Daniel Goldstein (book) created a musical called ROW – the heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting story of Tori Murden McClure, the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

2017 | Erin Markey's Little Surfer is a Beach Boys/Spice Girls-inspired energy concert written and created by Markey with music by Markey and Emily Bate.

2012 | In No Place to go, Ethan Lipton & his Orchestra an irreverent song cycle about the demise of a local workplace and the diminishing returns of the American dream. 

2020-2021 | Haig Papazian's Space Time Tuning Machine (STTM) is a cross-disciplinary musical narrative exploring the multifaceted meanings of home.

2019 | Helga Davis' Cassandra was inspired by the Greek myth of cursed seer Cassandra. A semi-autobiographical work that merged Davis’s own experience of otherness in contemporary America with the iconic myth, this raw work crashed classical legend into the 21st century to weave a prescient and fiery account of our culture’s possible demise.

2015 | Jamie Leonhart’s Estuary: an artist/mother story, made in collaboration with critically acclaimed director Joanna Settle, is a musical exploration of the challenges and unanticipated realities of being an artist and a new parent.

2018 | Jean Grae's Jenius is a deep dive into the multi-hyphenate's many lives, talents, and propensity for complete public vulnerability. It explores the importance of claiming your life's credits, the beauty of self-challenge, the exhaustion of explaining who/what you are and why you won't be stopped, and the importance of standing all the way up.

2015 | Joey Arias and playwright and director José Manuel López Velarde, of Mexico City’s innovative theater La Teatreria, developed a children’s musical called A, B… Z. This work explored the fluidity of humanity, the space between light and darkness, and the limitlessness of an open mind.

2015 | Mx Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman returned as their iconic characters Kiki and Herb – the “perverse” and “transcendental” (The New York Times) septuagenarian, lounge-singing duo. The pair debuted Seeking Asylum!, a fully-formed show with new music, current events and aged favorites.

2014 | In Bone Hill, Martha Redbone explored her Appalachian mining family's heritage and history in an epic piece that spans generations and a breadth of music genres. Redbone called on her Native American and African American roots to tell this unexpected family story that unveils a shadowy part of American history through breathtaking original music, humor and layers of dramatic revelation.

2018 | Renowned as a comic host around the world, Murray Hill: About to Break is a departure. It put Hill center stage in the first major dedicated solo show of his long, storied career. Musical direction is by Paul Leschen with original music by Hill with Scott Wittman, Marc Shaiman, Kyle Forrester, Eric Kornfeld, Jesse Elder, and Leschen.

2013 | Noche Flamenca’s adaptation of the Sophocles classic Antigone (Antigona in Spanish) honors the Greek tradition of sung poetry and musical accompaniment. The score was created by Salva de María, Eugenio Iglesias, David ‘Chupete’ Rodriguez, Hamed Traore, and Martín Santangelo using both traditional flamenco styles, new compositions, and the poetry of Sophocles.

2018 | Refrigerated Dreams is a multimedia installation and concert inspired by Carrie Weems’s seminal The Kitchen Table Series. It was directed by Niegel Smith and featured choreography and performances by Francesca Harper, Josh Johnson and The Francesca Harper Project, with original music by Nona Hendryx.

2012 | Rizo with director Niegel Smith: Ordained. Rizo was ordained by the Temple of Glitter. Aggressively feminine and possessing a distinct absence of inhibition, she led a night praising the power of song, giggles, madness and glamorous glances in this collaboration with director Niegel Smith.

2020 | Venus Smiles Not in the House of Tears is a transformative concert event and intimate, radical experiment in multi-genre storytelling, written and produced by Samora Pinderhughes and Jack DeBoe.

2016 | Dreaming Zenzile, a jazz opera based on the extraordinary life of the late South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba, conceived, written and performed by East African vocalist and songwriter Somi, and directed by Liesl Tommy.

2012 | Lines was a collaboration conceived by singer, musician, and composer Toshi Reagon in development with playwright Winter Miller, and director Lear deBesonnet. 

2022 - 2023 | Sunny Jain's Love Force is a musical theatre piece drawing parallels between the Indian caste system and hierarchies of America. The Punjabi dhol drum is the heartbeat of the show, bringing into conversation faith and compassion.

2019 | Traveling via intergalactic-astro-disco-space-punk velocity to deconstruct your mentality to a higher vibrational frequency, neo-afrofuturistic psychedelic surrealistic hippies, The Illustrious Blacks, invite you to Planet Ocsid to rejoice in their union…A Union Of Kings.

2022-2023 | treya lam developed otherland during their New York Voices commission year.

In this highly-anticipated collaboration, South African vocalist Vuyo Sotashe and pianist/composer Chris Pattishall come together for an intimate and soulful evening of duets. Mainstays of the NYC music scene over the last decade, Vuyo and Chris have each contributed to a wide range of projects spanning jazz, gospel, theater and film.

Described as "a bright tenor that can easily spring from sonorous depths to the full-bodied top of his impressive range" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Vuyo made his off-Broadway debut in The Public Theater's production of Black Light. Chris has established himself as "an expert at using the jazz tradition as a jumping off-point for experimentation" (JazzTimes) and his debut album Zodiac was called "a startling revelation" (NY Times). Together they make music with a hushed vulnerability, a quiet invocation of community in the midst of turbulent times. In a program that will range from the American masters of Duke Ellington and Nina Simone to South African Xhosa hymns and Stevie Wonder, Sotashe and Pattishall bring the healing power of music to the forefront.

2021 - 2022 | Yacine Boulares and Meera Dugal present the annual Habibi Festival: a performance showcase and community gathering that will amplify traditional and contemporary music from the SWANA region.