Bio & Press

BIO

“Committed to defying categorization…”

-Chaser Magazine

Pyeng Threadgill is an American vocalist, songwriter, writer, video artist as well as a voice and movement teacher. As a vocalist/performer she creates what she calls New Porch Music, a form based on the traditions of Black American Folk, Soul, Jazz and improvisational music. She uses these traditions to create connected conversations whereby audiences may reflect on their own life stories and identities for healing and empowerment. 

In her fourth solo album and multimedia project entitled "Head Full of Hair, Heart Full of Song", Ms. Threadgill shines a light on hair, adornment and ancestry and the political as well as spiritual implications of race, hair and identity. Using video installations exploring Black hair rituals, interactive poetry fed from a cotton candy machine, hair artists and curated sound, Pyeng sees this album in particular as a digital talisman for young Black women and girls to use as they move through the world. 

Prior to the release of “Head Full of Hair, Heart Full of Song”, Ms Threadgill began researching the dire circumstances of climate change, unearthing a song cycle. “Songlines”. “Songlines: Singing The Land” explores the foundational contributions of African and Indigenous people to organic farming and sustainability movements. 

In 2008 Pyeng was awarded a fellowship in Music Composition from New York Foundation for The Arts for her third solo album “Portholes To A Love & Other Short Stories.” “Portholes To A Love” traverses concepts of reality and magic, humanity and nature as shared in the short stories of well renowned authors. Taking inspiration from writers such as Isabelle Allende, Jamaica Kincaid, Jumpa Lahiri and others, Pyeng absorbs their words to convey the love, pain and longing of being human. 

With her two first albums “Sweet Home: The Music of Robert Johnson” and “Of The Air” Threadgill began touring both nationally and internationally headlining music venues and festivals around the globe. From Montreal Jazz Festival to Yoshi’s San Francisco, from Cognac Blues Festival in Cognac, France to the Blue Note Late Night Series and more Pyeng continues to cover vast ground.

In 2007 Pyeng was a featured artist in the music documentary “Retour A Goree” starring Senegalesse vocalist/composer Youssou N’Dour. She later appeared at Montreux Jazz Festival with this project. As a guest artist Pyeng has appeared with Marc Cary, Urban Bush Women, hattie gossett, Contra Tiempo and others. Currently Ms Threadgill is writing her first book, later to be released with a companion album, on the power of finding one’s voice.  

ARTIST STATEMENT
As a vocalist and performer I am interested in forms where the voice is exposed and one’s body/life story is revealed. From African American work- songs to spirituals, from orisha music to the Blues; from the croons, shouts and moans of Sam Cooke, Mavis Staples and Billie Holiday; from Americana to folk music everywhere.

I am inspired by the reimagining of multimedia artists such as Kara Walker, Bjork and Erykah Badu who move between fields and create their own archetypes and structures to embody and tell stories from. And I am further influenced by the reimagining of improvisational music and dance artists/groups such as Jeanne Lee, the Urban Bush Women, Amina Claudine Myers, Air trio and others. And it is the driving rhythms of Jazz, Funk, Rock, Soul, Salsa, East and West Africa which fuel my music composition impulses. 

When it comes to presentation I am drawn to what happens to performers and audiences during intimate concerts everywhere from subway platforms to loft parties, galleries to gardens, from tiny cafes to Tiny Desk concerts and how they remind us of our primal connections to music and one another.

PRESS

“Solange Curates Powerful Performance of Black Joy & Pain”

-The New York Times

“Charmingly eclectic”

-St Louis Today