Photo credit Carolyne Teston
Candice Hoyes is an artist of “chill-inducing range” (Vogue) across genre, medium and style. In 2024, Hoyes made her Lincoln Center composer debut in “Sadah Espii Proctor’s adrift” which is the first augmented reality installation in the Social Sculptures Project, a series of public art exhibitions. Upcoming debuts in 2024-25 season include The Kennedy Center, Morgan Library and Museum, Blacktronika Festival, unerhört! Festival, Harlem Chamber Players, The Shed and the Center for Performance Research.
Hoyes is featured on Carnegie Hall’s 2022 Timeline of African American Music. “Her scholarship on such luminaries of African American cultural history represents a noticeable departure from the usual practice of isolating creativity and critical analysis, and the textures of her sound exemplify Afrofuturism as well.” She is a 2024 Manhattan Arts Grant winner, 2022 MAP Fund recipient, 2021 Woodshed Network Women in Jazz Fellow and 2020 NYC Women’s Fund recipient. Hoyes is a 2023-24 Visiting Scholar at University of California at Berkeley, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and Rhode Island School of Design.
Born to Jamaican parents, Hoyes is a soprano, producer, songwriter, filmmaker and archivist mutually steeped in exploring the untold stories of her heritage. She began composing for her voice after her start as an award-winning singer (including First Place, International Paul Robeson Opera Competition.) Hoyes’s recent works include Carnegie Hall, Detroit Symphony, Jazz at Lincoln Center, This American Life, NYC JazzFest, Blue Note. She has performed or recorded with Chaka Khan, Jessye Norman, Courtney Bryan, Theaster Gates, Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Phillip Glass, Makaya McCraven, Lalah Hathaway and Lin-Manuel Miranda. She is honored to be a portrait model for Amy Sherald’s 2022 painting “as soft as she is….”
As an organizer, Hoyes collaborates with the Feminist Press, Well-Read Black Girl, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in Law, Harlem Arts Alliance, Women in Music, and numerous grassroots organizations. She has produced her feminist performance lecture series for Jazz at Lincoln Center and CUNY for three seasons. Hoyes has written for Shondaland, Blavity and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and spoken and performed at TED HQ.
Hoyes is a graduate of Harvard University, Columbia Law School, and lecturer at Jazz at Lincoln Center. She released her most recent experimental jazz album in 2023, “Nite Bjuti“ (pronounced night beauty) deemed by the BBC “A new group that is one of the most exciting and original I’ve heard this year.”