NEW ALBUM GRIEF OUT NOW ON STRETCH MUSIC/ROPEADOPE
May 10, 2022—Interdisciplinary artist, composer and filmmaker Samora Pinderhughes’ The Healing Project exhibition at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center For The Arts has been extended by popular demand and will run until September 4, 2022. Find additional details and tickets here.
Pinderhughes’ visual art debut is one part of his years-long multimedia effort The Healing Project and is produced by Anna Deavere Smith, Glenn Ligon and Vijay Iyer. The exhibit features a constellation of creative works including films, sound works, physical pieces and contributed artworks from established artists like Titus Kaphar and currently incarcerated artists including Pitt Panther. The work explores the daily realities of violence, incarceration, detention and policing in communities across the United States and highlights healing and care strategies that emerge from these same communities. “For us, the impact of The Healing Project is deeply felt within our spaces,” says Martin Strickland, Director of Curatorial Projects at the Center for the Arts. “The stories that are being told in the exhibition are having a profound effect on visitors and we are thrilled to be able to expand the exhibition’s ability to be seen and heard by various audiences throughout the summer.”
The heart of the exhibition is the Sound Room, where the interviews that Pinderhughes conducted over several years across 15 states for The Healing Project are scored to additional original music. The exhibition also includes workshops and events, all free and open to the public, and free performances featuring Pinderhughes and special guests.
Pinderhughes album GRIEF—another integral part of The Healing Project—is out now. Listen to/share the latest single “Grief” here and watch/share the videos to “Holding Cell” here
and “Masculinity” here.
Listen to the album here.
Additionally, watch a special NPR Tiny Desk performance of “The Cry/Masculinity,” “Holding Cell,” “Grief” and “Process” filmed onsite at The Healing Project exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts here.

Pinderhughes wrote all the songs and makes his official debut as a singer on GRIEF. Written in the spirit of music from the ’60s and ’70s by artists like Nina Simone and Curtis Mayfield who made powerful statements about life and social justice through their music, GRIEF aims to evoke feeling through texture and harmony by underlining the human voice as a bonding agent.
The digital archive of the installation, which will come later this spring is an open-source, mobile-friendly site built on AR/VR technology where people can listen directly to the recordings of The Healing Project interviewees scored to music. Pinderhughes created the digital archive alongside collaborators including Rafiq Bhatia, Chris Pattishall, Jack DeBoe and Adam O’Farrill, which features a brand-new visual world created by CRUXthat site visitors can walk through digitally.
Samora Pinderhughes is a composer, pianist, vocalist, filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist known for examining sociopolitical issues and fighting for change through his art. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Pinderhughes began playing music at the age of two years and went on to study music at Juilliard, where he met his primary artistic mentor, MacArthur-winning playwright Anna Deavere Smith. Pinderhughes has collaborated and performed with a number of artists including Common, Robert Glasper, Karriem Riggins, Sara Bareilles and Herbie Hancock, and his compositional works have been commissioned by institutions including Carnegie Hall, the Sundance Film Festival and the Kennedy Center.