Houston-born bassoonist, composer, improviser, and performance artist Joy Guidry follows her acclaimed 2024 release AMEN with a new album comprised of five transportive and genre-defying sonic meditations.

Out May 16 via her own Jaid Records, Five Prayers focuses more heavily on Guidry's bassoon playing than before, allowing it to become the voice and the vessel of the record.

In an accompanying press release, Five Prayers is described as Guidry's "most expansive and intimate work to date" and "an offering of meditative, ambient, and soul-stirring compositions born from a year of mental health challenges and spiritual rediscovery."

Lead track "Hold and Be Held", out today, is described by the artist as a harmonic response to a poem by Nikki Giovanni, which featured on the late writer's 1976 Folkways recording Legacies. Listen to it below:

Drawing on ambient gospel, experimental jazz, and textured electronics and exploring "the spiritual and sonic terrains of living with Bipolar II disorder," Guidry is joined on Five Prayers by harpist Elizabeth Steiner and Diego Gaeta on synths. The artwork (below) uses the same headpiece that Guidry wore for the cover of AMEN, only this time she is missing from the picture.

Five Prayers tracklist:

1. Convince Me To Stay 
2. You've Done What You Can 
3. Hold and Be Held
4. Myles 
5. I Know You're Always With Me 

Guidry has a series of solo shows coming up, as well as one show as a trio and one as a quartet with SCRAAATCH (aka MHYSA and chuki) and MAYSUN. Full list of dates below:

05/10 New York, NY @ Fridman Gallery (quartet)
05/17 Berlin, DE @ XJazz Festival
05/19 Amsterdam, NL @ Bimhuis
05/22 Frankfurt, DE @ Jazz Montez
05/23 Cologne, DE @ King Georg Jazz Club
06/14 Sparta, NJ @ Dripping Festival (trio)

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